As of Feb. 14, Industrial Workers of the World announced that employees at Alamo Drafthouse‘s South Lamar flagship location are forming a union with IWW’s assistance. The Drafthouse has not yet officially recognized the union, but in a post IWW states that “DU [Drafthouse United] is excited to begin good faith negotiations with Drafthouse management. [Workers’] key requests include increases in wages and benefits, paid sick leave, transparency regarding COVID-19 practices and policies, and a resolution to long-standing building maintenance requests.”
Negotiations began privately a week ago, when DU emailed a list of demands to Drafthouse leadership with a deadline to respond by 5pm Monday. They responded with 30 minutes to spare, but due to miscommunication at IWW the news went public. DU decided to roll with it, says Zach “Corpse” Corpstein, a server since 2017: “We received a response that was unsatisfactory. And we proceeded with a professional high-road route of going public.”
“Some things may be on store management and some things on corporate – we don’t know which is which – that’s why we’re organizing, so we can talk to both to flip the issues out.” – Zach “Corpse” Corpstein
Workers are calling for increased wages, benefits, and paid sick leave – as “we are consistently one of the most profitable Drafthouses,” says Corpstein – but most of DU’s issues center around poor communication from leadership. During the most recent winter storm, “iciness on the roads made many employees feel it was unsafe to drive home, [and] there was not enough communication on that day. All of these issues might fall in line if there was a more direct line of communication.”
In letters on IWW’s website, Corpstein and Duncan Lott, an employee since 2016, detail the gradual phase-out of initially strong COVID protocols through communications that were “murky at best … At some point [buffer seating] was done away with, probably in a relative valley of cases,” and Corpstein says neither employees nor guests were notified it was ending. When staff asked to reinstate it, “we were told in a mass email ‘it is extremely important that we send the message to our guests and our studio partners that we are here and committed to the success of the industry.'” Employees who had contact with a COVID case “were told that as long as they weren’t exhibiting symptoms they were probably fine to work a shift,” writes Corpstein.
Corpstein says it’s unclear if some issues are due to standard operating procedures or simply bad communication from management. Ryan Schibi, the beloved manager at South Lamar who didn’t know about the unionization effort – “for the sake of his job security, we kept things as close to the chest as possible” – was let go the day after demands were sent. Corpstein says upper management “knows how bad that looks, but it was supposedly unrelated … He is well-known as a person who would go to bat for his employees. Some things may be on store management and some things on corporate – we don’t know which is which – that’s why we’re organizing, so we can talk to both to flip the issues out.”
No other locations have joined so far, but Corpstein says “We could lead by example, [and] help by increasing transparency for everybody. Hopefully, before South by Southwest, we can have a meeting.”
At press time, Drafthouse PR had not yet responded to the Chronicle‘s request for comment.
This article appears in February 18 • 2022.