When the bigwigs at Northern Stage say the law doesn’t apply to their professional theater company in downtown White River Junction, it’s not just an act.
Shortly before Christmas, Northern Stage informed five female employees at its state-of-the-art $9 million theater that even though Vermont’s hourly minimum wage was about to increase to $12.55, they wouldn’t benefit from the law change, which went into effect Jan. 1.
As a nonprofit, Northern Stage was only “legally obligated” to pay the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, Managing Director Irene Green wrote in a December email to the five employees who work behind the scenes as production apprentices.
In her best Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” performance, Green reminded the women that their apprentice contracts called for them to make $12 an hour.
Not a penny more.
Under Vermont labor laws, a “publicly supported nonprofit organization” can avoid paying the state minimum wage to hourly workers.
Since Northern Stage relies heavily on donations, I suppose it could be on firm legal ground.
But morally is it OK to use an exemption in state wage law to shortchange workers at the low end of the pay scale?
That’s a question Northern Stage’s deep-pocketed donors might want to ask.
In 2020, Vermont lawmakers passed a bill that raised the state’s minimum wage from $11.75 to $12.55, starting this year. It’s an improvement — and certainly better than New Hampshire, which remains stuck at the federal minimum — but $12.55 an hour is hardly a living wage.
By my math, going from $12 to $12.55 an hour amounts to annual pay raise of $1,144 for each worker. The total cost to Northern Stage: $5,720. (It doesn’t include any overtime pay in which workers earn time and a half.)
In her email, Green told the low-wage employees that “unfortunately, there isn’t room in our budget to increase salaries at this time.”
Really?
Like many businesses and nonprofits, Northern Stage is still recovering from the economic wallop inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
I’m not sure Northern Stage can cry poverty, though.
The organization took in $5.4 million in contributions and grants during the fiscal year ending May 31, 2020, according to its most recent federal tax return.
As I’ve written about before, Northern Stage has become a player in downtown White River Junction’s real estate market. Since 2018, it has paid more than $1 million for three buildings that it uses for workforce housing.
The buying spree doesn’t appear over. At the same time that Northern Stage claimed it couldn’t afford to pay Vermont’s minimum wage, it’s been working on a deal to buy a soon-to-be vacant lot in the downtown’s historic district.
On its website, Northern Stage refers to workers in its “production apprentice company” as students who “engage in hands-on learning in their areas of focus, such as carpentry, sewing, props fabrication and stage management.”
I think that’s a fancy way of saying they’re interns. Chances are they’re young people looking to break into show biz who Northern Stage figures it can hire on the cheap.
But Northern Stage’s penny-pinching at the expense of its workers is on the verge of backfiring.
After Green’s email in December made the rounds, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE for short), Local 919 was approached about initiating a unionizing effort.
Patrick Bryant, a Boston lawyer who advises Local 919, told me about an old adage in the labor world that seems to apply to Northern Stage.
Sometimes the “best union organizer is the boss.”
On Jan. 31, the IATSE filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board, asking that some Northern Stage workers be allowed to vote on forming a union.
The NLRB, as the federal agency is known, requires at least 30% of workers in a potential bargaining unit to sign on before an election can be held.
Local 919 says it’s met the threshold.
In a news release issued Tuesday, Local 919 called the NLRB petition a “significant step forward” for Northern Stage employees in their “struggle for livable wage, health care coverage, and retirement benefits.”
From what I gather, about 20 Northern Stage workers could be eligible to join the union that represents 150,000 technicians, artisans and theatrical stage employees in the U.S. and Canada.
Local 919 represents 75 theater workers in Vermont and at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center for the Arts.
An election could be held as soon as late this month.
In the meantime, Northern Stage officials are trying to end the workers’ uprising before the curtain goes up.
In response to questions I emailed to her on Monday, Green told me that prior to Local 919 filing its petition with the NLRB, Northern Stage officials had “found a way to accommodate a further pay increase for the apprentice company.”
Greene didn’t say how much the workers would get or when.
Northern Stage has also retained a New York law firm, Kauff McGuire & Margolis, that has “expertise in union matters as related to not-for-profit theater,” Green said.
I’m not familiar with the going rate for big-city lawyers who specialize in fighting unions, but I’m guessing it’s more than $12 an hour.
Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.
