By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
With the Metropolitan Opera and Broadway set to open in September, the stage crews need to start getting back to work shortly. “The Met Opera is telling us our stage crew needs to return to work soon for the Met’s season, to start on Sept. 27,” said James Claffey Jr., president of Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, IATSE.
As reported by Crain’s NY, the Met’s stagehands began negotiating with the opera house as of June 7, after seven months with no formal or informal talks, since their contracts ended in July. A spokesperson for the union said that at the start of the talks, the union thought it needed to reach a deal by June 14, but now it seems there are a few more days to make an agreement before time runs out to finish work needed before the season can begin.
The Met did not reply to Crain’s request about when stagehands would need to return to work in order for the 2021–2022 season to open on time. The Met’s 2021–22 season is set to open September 27, with the Met premiere of Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones—the first opera by an African American composer to be performed at the Met
When the stagehands’ contracts had ended, the opera had been shuttered due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In December, the group was locked out by their former bosses. In May they rallied outside the opera house. Last week, the union organized a virtual picket line, in which they uploaded pictures of themselves with a sign and had the images projected in front of Lincoln Center.
Negotiations are stuck on the opera’s use of nonunion workers to build some of the sets, which the Local 1’s members would have made if they had they been on the job. Another union, representing scenery workers, said it had a similar situation when they showed up and saw that backdrops it should have been hired to paint were already completed.
Other union workers at the Met also have their contracts up for negotiation shortly. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra, has a contract ending this July.
The Met’s 2020 tax return showed it was profitable. As per the Associated Press, the opera house significantly cut expenses, with the amount it spent on salaries declining by $41 million.
