By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
State of the Union: behind the NY projectionists' union's concessions
The Reeler’s getting in the trenches of the disagreement about unions and New York’s new IFC Center, discovering there’s more to the story, and that it might be unfair to single out IFC in light of other, prior machinations: “The Reeler spoke today with union president Michael Goucher, who explained an arrangement that might make the IFC Center standoff look downright equitable by comparison.”We have with certain individual theaters within a chain of theaters [an agreement that] they have the right to have managers operate, provided they meet certain criteria… In the cases where it is contractually agreed, they must be managers. Once we agree to let that happen, we have no control over what the criteria are—the circumstances or whatever. As far as we’re concerned, it is based on a negotiated agreement, and the negotiated agreement is what determines what we will not do and what we will do.” What does this mean? “In other words, Regal, Loews and AMC do not have any obligation to use union projectionists—and there is no guarantee that they are.” Goucher unreels further: “”The reason this was acceded to in New York City is because at one time, some of these companies were going bankrupt… We got hoodwinked, because those bankruptcies were all absolute phony bankruptcies, and they were meant to make the price of the company attractive to a new buyer.” … “Bottom line? Sayles–and not just a few other powerful New Yorkers–might be writing a lot more letters before this is all said and done.” [More of the nitty and gritty at the link.]