Yahoo News Workers at Cinema Village, One of New York’s Oldest Art Theaters, Launch Unionization Drive
Another group of workers at a storied New York cinema is launching a unionization effort with the United Auto Workers.
Following the recent success of organizing drives at Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives and Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park, employees at Cinema Village in Greenwich Village petitioned on Friday for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. According to United Auto Workers Local 2179, which is backing the effort, nine out of the affected 10 full-time and part-time employees have signed union cards in support of joining the Local.
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Constructed in 1963, the three-screen Cinema Village is billed as the oldest continuously operating movie theater in Greenwich Village and one of the oldest art theaters in the city. “Cinema Village is iconic and we care so much for its history,” employee Jack Peterson said in a statement. “It’s the employees that make that history continue. If you care about the plight of the striking actors and writers, you have to care about the people who screen their movies just as much.”
The owner of the theater, when reached by phone on Friday, said he was surprised by the union drive because the theater doesn’t draw much income and faces stiff competition from multiplexes and more modern theaters. (The owner declined to give his name on the phone, but the union and past press articles identify him as Nicolas Nicolaou. Nicolaou, who started working in theaters at the age of 15 and later came to own several, was the subject of Abel Ferrara’s 2019 documentary The Projectionist.) “I’m not the kind of a person who would do what other theaters did in New York to declare bankruptcy. And it’s a struggle,” he said. “We’re trying to keep it alive and we’ll face whatever. If there’s some grievance of anybody, what can I say? We’ll look at it in good faith.”
Employees — who work in projection, at the box office and concessions — are concerned about lack of raises for some workers (many are paid minimum wage) and a dearth of healthcare options for full-time and part-time employees, according to UAW Local 2179. The union also alleges that the workers do not receive overtime pay, receive “insufficient” sick and vacation time and face “dangerous” working conditions. Those conditions range from “mold in the walls to equipment causing burns and electrical shocks in the recent past to nails protruding from theater seats,” per the union.
The owner responded that the allegation about overtime pay was not true. He added that in general, “I follow what is the New York law. That’s what we’ve done for years. If things have changed that I’m not aware of, of course we’re willing to listen.”
UAW Local 2179 has made new gains in the movie theater space in the past year, unionizing workers at Alamo Drafthouse’s Manhattan and Brooklyn locations in 2023 and Nitehawk CInema in Prospect Park this year. The Local has represented workers at six AMCs in the city for about two decades. “This is a fertile environment” for organizing the space, UAW Local 2179 second vice president Will Bobrowski previously told THR. “Where’s last place cinemas are ever going to go out of business? Your town and my town.”
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