Projectionists Picket Oaks Theater

Projectionists Picket Oaks Theater
By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

The Oaks Theater hadn’t even officially changed hands Thursday when the projectionists’ union announced a labor action at the 1875 Solano Ave. movie house.

Pickets will go up today starting at 2:30 p.m., an hour ahead of the day’s first screening. They will leave after the evening’s last showing begins at 8:30.

At issue is the fate of the theater’s two projectionists, both members of one of the oldest unions in show business, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (CQ), Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada (IATSE).

Jason Mottley, business agent for IATSE Local 169, said the Oaks has been a union shop since the theater first opened in 1925.

Longtime operator Allen Michaan has said his Renaissance Rialto is severing its lease because the small, East Bay operation didn’t have the economic clout to win major first-run films.

Metropolitan, based in Los Angeles, is a larger operation with 15 screens across North America and specializes in art films.

Mottley said Metropolitan wants to change to a non-union shop and has said it will dump one of the union projectionists and keep the other for a year while he trains their replacements.

That concession would allow him to work until his scheduled retirement at a 25 percent cut in wages and a 33 percent cut in hours.

Under the current agreement, projectionists are paid $15.49 an hour

“One of the projectionists has been there 26 years and the other’s been there 24 years,” Mottley said.

Metropolitan President David Corwin said his company had been negotiating with the union, and that the call from a Daily Planet reporter was the first he’d heard of the intended job action.

“They had an agreement with the previous operator who had multiple screens in the area,” Corwin said. “None of the other theaters in Berkeley have union employees.”

Not so, said Mottley. The union official pointed to union workers—including projectionists—at all but the UA 7 on Shattuck Avenue.

As for the latter, “that’s because they’re part of Regal, which is the largest operator in the country and doesn’t have any union employees except in Chicago and New York,” he said.

The IATSE local currently has 40 members in Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties, he said

While Corwin declined to comment on the specifics of negotiations, Mottley said the chain originally tried to get both projectionists to abandon the union.

Pickets will return to the Oaks from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday through Monday, he said.

“They’ll remain indefinitely as long as we can get them out there,” Mottley said.

http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=02-18-05&storyID=20763