Broadway Production Assistants Seek Recognition As Equity Union Members

Actors’ Equity Association (the union representing more than 51,000 professional actors and stage managers in live theatre) announced that it has organized Broadway production assistants (PAs), and that the PAs are seeking voluntary recognition from The Broadway League, the organization representing theater owners and producers.

If the League does not recognize the request the PAs will likely “overwhelmingly vote to unionize,” Equity said.

“The Broadway League and our members support the right of employees to lawfully choose a bargaining representative,” the League statement said.

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.”

“Getting a Broadway production up and running is an enormous task,” said Koster, “and the work of Broadway’s stage management teams prior to opening night is fundamental to any show’s success. “Every one of these workers, whether their title is production stage manager, stage manager, assistant stage manager or production assistant, is a skilled professional and essential to the team. And yet, production assistants have stood alone for too long as the only members of these teams without the basic protections of union contracts – without safe and sanitary workplace requirements, without protections against harassment and discrimination, without living wages, without health and pension benefits.”