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Approximately 90 unionized employees of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (at 28 Liberty Street, in the Financial District) have gone on strike after the theater chain’s corporate parent unilaterally moved to lay off approximately 25 percent of the location’s workforce.
A spokesman for Alamo Drafthouse did not respond to a request for comment, but William Bobrowsky, the first vice president of the United Auto Workers Local 2179 (the parent organization of the NYC Alamo United union, which represents the staff at the 28 Liberty theater) explained, “this strike is entirely about the layoffs, which in our view are illegal.”
He added, “we are currently at the negotiating table for over a year and working on our first collective bargaining agreement,” after Alamo workers voted to unionize in 2024. “Federal labor law calls this a ‘status quo period,’ which means that management cannot make major alterations to the status quo without bargaining. And laying off one quarter of the staff is a pretty big change to the status quo.”
“The company decided to reduce force across the entirety of their business, nationwide,” Mr. Bobrowsky said. “But because this is a unionized location, we have the right to negotiate with the company about the terms and conditions of the proposed layoffs.”
“We met with Alamo’s team four or five times in January into February, but after several meetings that they declared we were at an impasse on the matter of layoffs, and moved to implement them unilaterally on February 3,” he said.
“Under federal labor law,” Mr. Bobrowsky said, “you can’t declare an impasse on a single issue. An impasse means these parties have nothing to more talk about on any issue, that they’re at loggerheads, and they are done talking. But they are still talking to us about the overall collective bargaining agreement, which means there is no impasse.”
As a result, UAW Local 2179 and NYC Alamo United union filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that enforces U.S. labor law. This complaint alleges two violations: “refusal to bargain” and “refusal to furnish information.”
“The NLRB takes time to process this kind of complaint,” Mr. Bobrowsky noted, “but in the meantime we have picketers marching out in front of the theater, which continues to operate under a scaled-back schedule with a small number of employees and some management personnel.”
“Our goal is to get these jobs back for the workers who are still willing to return,” he added, “and to get severance payments for those who won’t be coming back. They should all be made whole for their lost wages and get a payout of unused paid time off.”
“But right now,” he added, “the company is saying only that they are moving ahead with these layoffs, and their answer is ‘no, no, no, no,’ on everything else. If they will engage with us, maybe we can find some middle ground.”
Matthew Fenton
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