Walkout averted, Convention Center stagehands approve contract

In a quick turnaround, union stagehands today ratified a three-year contract that preserves most of their work at the Pennsylvania Convention Center while giving customers more flexibility in setting up their equipment.

The vote came this afternoon, barely 12 hours after the union - International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 8 - and Elliot-Lewis Corp., the company that supplies labor at the center, reached an agreement at 1:30 a.m.

"This is a gigantic step forward for the building," said James Gentile, vice president of Elliot-Lewis Corp.

"This agreement makes it easier for the customer to come into the building and hold meetings and do a lot of the AV work in the meeting room, which had been one of the sources of aggravation. Customers had complained about it."

The stagehands' contract had expired at the stroke of the new year, but the union agreed to hold off on any walkout until after the Mummers finished their New Year's Day performance at the Convention Center.

Even as the Mummers strutted on golden slippers for a sold-out show, union and management negotiators did their own dance at the bargaining table.

The agreement addresses a key sticking point: the operation of audio-visual equipment in the meeting rooms at the convention center.

The union said that management wanted to use nonunion workers to set up the equipment. Management said the convention center wants its customers to be able to set up their own simple equipment, such as laptops used to operate power-point presentations.

Union business agent Michael Barnes said the union had always informally allowed that, but would now codify it in an agreement. "Now they'll be able to sell that" when trying to book conventions, Barnes said.

And when the customer does not want to do that work, union stagehands would handle it, but at a lower tech rate, said Albert Mezzaroba, president of the Convention Center. The center wanted that work performed by nonunion employees of the audiovisual contractor that the Convention Center uses.

More complicated work will be done by stagehands at the normal pay rate.

Local 8 union accepted reduced holidays and cuts in double-time pay, now receiving it only for work on Sundays and holidays, instead of on some other days. The union will see a combined pay and benefit increase of 12 percent over three years, Barnes said.

Philadelphia has been struggling to overcome an image of having management and labor issues at the Convention Center, although there has been a long period of relative harmony since a customer service agreement was negotiated in 2003.

The contract dispute had threatened to disrupt the set-up of the American Baseball Coaches Association, which began today.

If the stagehands did go on strike, it was unclear whether any of the other unions at the center - among them the Internationational Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Laborers International Union of North America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners - would have crossed the picket line.

But several sources familiar with the negotiations said that the carpenters had indicated that they would cross the stagehands' picket line. In the past, the carpenters and stagehands have been involved in jurisdictional disputes over work at the Convention Center.

Edward Coryell, who heads the carpenters' Metropolitan Regional Council of Philadelphia and Vicinity, did not return several phone calls and messages seeking a response.

The stagehands set up stages, lighting and sound for more theatrically-oriented exhibits in the main convention halls, but about 60 percent of their work at the center is in meeting rooms, Barnes said.

Barnes said that the union had told company negotiators from the start that it would not allow nonunion employees to do work reserved for union stagehands.

"It should never have come to this," he said.

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