Last week I saw that production assistants (PA) on Broadway shows were seeking to unionize under the auspices of Actors Equity Association, which represents actors and stage managers.
What really surprised me was that production assistants weren’t part of a union when pretty much every other group that staffs Broadway houses, including the ushers, ticket takers and doormen, are unionized.
Reading the description of what they do and how hard they work, it seems like there would have been a natural fit either in IATSE, the stage hands union, or Actors Equity, and they would have unionized long ago.
PAs, the union says, are hourly employees who work as part of stage management teams “from pre-production through opening night, doing everything from preparing rehearsal materials to ensuring decisions made during rehearsals are recorded to being extra sets of hands and eyes during complicated technical rehearsals to efficiently running errands that keep the rehearsal productive.”
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The unionization would cover PAs who work as part of stage management teams on Broadway and sit-down productions produced by members of The Broadway League.
I strongly suspect there was some sort of politics or bias that prevented production assistants from being courted/allowed to join a union and something has changed. I would love it if someone had any insight.
One thing that may have changed is that Equity has shifted their approach to membership in the last couple years, broadening the scope of those they are willing to represent. I wrote in 2021 about how they adjusted the standards that would allow performers to apply for union membership. As I recently wrote, Equity also successfully unionized dancers at a strip club rather than nudging them toward AGMA, the union representing cabaret performers, or SEIU who had represented dancers at another strip club ~25 years ago.