Workers at Promowest fight for pay, benefits
New union, company yet to reach deal on contract
In summer 2020, employees at Express Live!, Newport Music Hall, The Basement and A&R Music Bar voted to join the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), fed up with what they viewed as substandard wages and no benefits.
More than two years later, IATSE Local No. 12 and Promowest Productions — the promoter and operator of the venues — have yet to agree to a contract.
“It’s like dragging our knuckles through glass,” Travis Lautenschlager, senior audio technician at Kemba Live!, said of the last few years. “Face and neck included.”
The delay is not rare for initial unionization
efforts. Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research and a senior lecturer at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School, said just 38% of unions have a contract within a year of winning elections, and nearly a third still do not have a first contract more than three years after the election was held.
“It’s not like renewing a contract where you’re just making some changes,” she added. “With first contracts, you have to negotiate every single word.”
Lautenschlager, 33, has worked at Kemba Live! since 2012 and has participated as an observer during contract negotiations between IATSE and Promowest.
Lautenschlager said up until recently, stagehands at the four Promowest venues in Columbus were being paid as low as $13 an hour, a wage he called well below industry standard. Promowest workers, no matter their position, are not offered health insurance or retirement benefits, he added.
“Over the years I’ve lost a lot of good coworkers just because they can’t survive on the income in that building,” Lautenschlager said. “I’ve worked so
many other jobs that I’ve worked myself into the ground to keep myself afloat inside this industry.”
Unionizing vote upheld
In 2018, Promowest was acquired by Los Angeles-based AEG Presents, one of the largest concert promoters in the world. Employees were promised health insurance and annual raises as part of the purchase, Lautenschlager said. But those promises never materialized.
Brian Thomas, business agent at IATSE Local No. 12, said a group of Promowest stagehands first approached the union in early 2020, and subsequently voted to unionize in a 16-13 vote. Approximately 46 workers were eligible to vote in the election.
Promowest, now a division of AEG Presents, challenged the election results, but the National Labor Relations Board, the independent federal agency that oversees union activity and employee rights, upheld them in November 2020.
Contract negotiations began sometime in late 2020 or early 2021, according to Thomas, who says most of the “boilerplate” language of the contract has been tentatively agreed to. But talks began to stall toward the end of last year, Thomas said, when workers rejected an offer of $15 per hour of minimum pay, and $15.50 if IATSE dropped the other three Promowest venues and concentrated all of its efforts on Kemba Live!.
Time isn’t the deciding factor in whether a group of workers successfully unionizes, Bronfenbrenner said. It’s getting public support.
“If an employer doesn’t want a union, the only way a union wins is by continuing the organizing and by using their leverage in the community locally, regionally, nationally to make the cost of not settling greater than the cost of settling.
“You don’t win at the bargaining table. You win with your campaign.”
On Monday, representatives of IATSE Local No. 12, including Thomas, handed out fliers and pamphlets to attendees of that night’s Dropkick Murphys concert at Kemba Live!, informing them of the organizing campaign.
Surge in Columbus labor efforts
At a time when union membership is at a historic low – 10.3% in 2021, accordmembers
ing to recent numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Columbus has seen a surge in organizing efforts in recent years.
Workers at a Starbucks in downtown Columbus voted to unionize in May, and workers at a Starbucks in Westerville have begun the lengthy process. Staff at the Columbus Museum of Art and the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University also say they plan to form unions.
IATSE Local No. 12 has about 230
and around 600 others on a worklist who work at venues in and around Columbus, including those operated by the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts (CAPA), the Greater Columbus Convention Center and both Columbus Crew stadiums.
At those venues, starting wages for stagehands is $20 an hour and $27 an hour for technicians, according to Thomas. The venues also pay into a shared health insurance and retirement fund for union workers, something Promowest
and AEG have balked at, according to Thomas.
“For a multi-million dollar, if not billion-dollar company, we cannot imagine why they would balk at this. But that’s bargaining,” Thomas said.
“That is the game they play; they’re going to try to get off as cheap as possible. These workers have been treated like crap for years and years and years.
“This is skilled work. It can be dangerous. People go to school for this stuff.”
Scott Stienecker, founder and CEO of Promowest Productions, referred comment to AEG Presents, a spokesperson of which said the company looks forward to “reaching an agreement with Local 12 soon.”
More money at Mcdonald’s or Amazon
On March 1, Promowest raised its minimum pay to $16 per hour, according to Thomas and Lautenschlager.
“We kept telling them during bargaining sessions that people can go make burgers at Mcdonald’s and Burger King, or work at Amazon for more than what you’re offering and get benefits,” Thomas said. “You need to pony up.”
The union’s last proposal included a minimum wage of $18 per hour, plus health insurance and benefits, according to Thomas.
“They’re bleeding people. They can’t get people to come and work there because of the wage,” Thomas said.
“There are so many other options nowadays.”
Lautenschlager said he’s paid $20 per hour. To make ends meet, he freelances for other companies in and around Columbus, which he said pay him twice the amount Promowest does.
So why stay with Promowest? For Lautenschlager, Kemba Live! is a place he’s sunk a lot of blood, sweat and tears into, and he not ready to let all that hard work go to waste.
Going forward, Lautenschlager said he and his coworkers would like to be paid a wage comparable to what other stagehands and technicians in Columbus and elsewhere make, as well as benefits.
“Hell, I believe there are people who have been there for 15 years that are still not offered health insurance or any form of retirement,” Lautenschlager said of Kemba Live!
Monroe Trombly covers the workplace and environmental issues for The Columbus Dispatch. mtrombly@dispatch.com @monroetrombly