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Battle Royal
Just as the best place and time one can panhandle in Toronto is outside the Princess of Wales Theatre when the show letting out is Les Misérables, there are likely few more effective or appropriate locations to stage a union protest than outside a movie theatre screening a certain film about agitated simians/urban revolutionaries targeted squarely at a hip, leftist audience consisting primarily of agitated simians/urban revolutionaries.
Anyone ambling along College Street between Clinton and Grace on Friday night found themselves greeted by members of I.A.T.S.E. (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, generally pronounced “Eye-at-see”) Local 173, the Ontario Projectionists and Video Technicians Union, urging a boycott of the newly reopening Royal Cinema.
The substance after the jump.
From the brightly-coloured leaflets the picketers were graciously distributing:
• The Facts… A new company, Theatre D Digital, has purchased the Royal Cinema.
• The new owners of this theatre have refused to employ our members despite the fact that we have a legal collective agreement at this theatre. They have forced our projectionist out of his job.
• We have been forced to picket because Theatre D has refused to meet with us and discuss the situation after many attempts on our part
The handout then goes on to inform that “You can help by not going in until this dispute is settled, buying nothing at the snack bar,” and contacting the owners, John Hazen and Dan Peel.
Those aforementioned owners, presumably realizing that they had a public relations nightmare unfolding under their marquee, shot back with their own release, hastily (but efficiently) typed up and printed out on site. In part:
Contrary to Local 173 claims, Theatre D did not purchase nor is the owner of the Royal Theatre, 606 College Street, Toronto. Moreover it did not purchase the business or the corporate entity that formerly owned or operated the Royal. The company which owned or operated this facility is, to the best of our knowledge, no longer in business and none of its principals is involved with Theatre D. The Royal Theatre was purchased in June, 2006 by a historical property enthusiast and leased to Theatre D.
[snip]
It is incorrect to suggest that Theatre D is ignoring the union’s concerns. Theatre D was only made aware of the Local 173 concerns a few weeks ago – some five months after the theatre was sold and retrofitting began. Once the union provided copies of the relevant documents Theatre D requested legal advice regarding the union’s claims. As these are complex issues involving several areas of law, the research and opinion have not yet been completed but are expected to be ready shortly.
“Theatre D is unaware of any legal or moral obligation that would compel it to assume any contract Local 173 may have had with the former owner(s) or operators of the Royal Theatre,” said Dan Peel of Theatre D.
There having been no prior word or news coverage of the union’s grievances or intention to picket (although a Google News search reveals a Canada NewsWire (CNW) release from earlier in the day), potential patrons were thus compelled to base any decision on whether or not to enter the theatre on the dueling leaflets, which of course only provided parts of the story.
More substantive information can now, however, be garnered from that CNW release, which illuminates that “Under the Labour Relations Act of Ontario a Union retains its jurisdiction whenever a business is sold. The Royal was sold to Theatre D by the McQuillan family that formerly ran the Festival Chain.” The Theatre D release disputes the latter claim, but their retort that the movie house was sold to a “historical property enthusiast and leased to Theatre D” is certainly news to us. Virtually every article published about the Royal’s salvation (including several archived on Theatre D’s own site), makes specific mention of the ownership of the property itself having been transferred to Theatre D.
Another issue one might consider, although it is of course irrelevant from a labour perspective, is whether the projection at the previous incarnation of the Royal was actually all that good. Having seens scores of films there over the past few years, Torontoist can recall countless occasions in which multiple reels or even whole films were presented out of focus. Although there are certainly many factors that may have contributed to this, one person familiar with the situation confided that the blame lay with the projectionist. Not that the projection at the new Royal is necessarily better: during the first screening, the horizontal masking was excessively modest, leaving blank spaces on the screen at both sides of the frame, which itself was darker towards the edges, as though the film had been shot with a spotlight mounted on the camera.
In any case, we would hate for this disagreement to devolve into another Blue Man debacle and sincerely hope that all parties involved are able to come to an amicable resolution, so that we can sit back in the theatre (which has new, yet equally bouncy, seats!) and enjoy forms of warfare other than those concerning class.