Across the country, movie theater workers—like other workers in the service and retail sectors—are forming unions. Worker organizing has come to big chains and indie cinemas alike.
The reasons are largely the same as ever, including wages, benefits, respect on the job, and a fair process for dispute resolution. Increasingly, as in much of the service sector, workers complain about understaffing—and the effect of understaffing on the customer experience. Workers at an Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn told the Associated Press last year that “Barbenheimer” was the “breaking point.”
“People were waiting longer than usual for their food and that makes them short-tempered and impatient,” recalls Tyler Trautman, a shift leader. “We're the ones facing customers. It takes a toll, a mental toll, to be yelled at by guests because their drink has been taking an hour."
Workers often mention safety concerns. At Brooklyn’s independent Nitehawk Cinema, workers complained of recurring problems going unaddressed: “In the summer… the air conditioning goes out in the building semi-regularly — causing the concrete floors to become wet, slippery and dangerous for employees delivering food inside a dark movie theater.” In March 2024, workers voted 51-41 to unionize; the union includes bartenders, cooks, runners, porters, and servers.
That same month, workers voted 37-6 to unionize at the AMC Theater at Universal City in Southern California. The union includes all ushers, cooks, bartenders, and other non-management employees. (This is reportedly the second unionized AMC, after the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach.)
Workers are not just winning union elections—they are winning good contracts. Eight months after the management at Amherst Cinema in Western Massachusetts voluntarily recognized the union, workers ratified a contract with an average six percent raise in the first year, along with other improvements to time off and benefit policies. The contract runs through June 2025. At the 2028 expiration of the newly-ratified contract at New York’s Film Forum, the facility staff will make a minimum of $38 an hour, while part-time theater staff will make no less than $23 an hour. The contract also provides health care and creates a 401(k)-type program and four weeks of paid parental leave.
Anthology Film Archives workers conducted a one-day strike in 2022 before also settling a first contract in 2023. Workers at the Nitehawk and at AMC Universal City are now in bargaining.
One beloved chain that has distinguished itself as a repeated bad actor is the Alamo Drafthouse, which has fought against its workers in at least five states. In Missouri, workers complained about racism and sexual harassment. In San Francisco, workers alleged sexual harassment and assault, as well as other unsafe workplace conditions and general disrespect. Accounts of union-busting follow Alamo across the country from Texas to New York to Colorado.
Workers at several Alamo locations in New York have already voted in the union and are currently bargaining for a first contract. And despite the efforts of Alamo management, workers at two Denver-area Alamo locations will soon vote on whether or not to unionize. In late May, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that elections can move forward for workers at the Westminster facility in Denver on May 31, 2024 and at the Sloan’s Lake facility in Denver on June 7, 2024.
If Alamo workers in Denver vote yes, they will join the growing ranks of unionized theater workers across the country. One of the most recent to organize was New York’s Cinema Village, where the ten-person unit wanted to fight abusive management and was recognized in May 2024. Employee Jack Peterson called on other workers to join him:
"Honestly, it was so much easier than I would have expected to get the whole thing started… I hope that other people who work in movie theaters see it and decide to give it a shot themselves.”
