For several hours every day since Monday, a small picket line has marched outside the Players Club’s landmark Greek Revival town house, which was deeded to the group by one of its famous founders: John Wilkes Booth’s brother Edwin, the leading Shakespearean actor in late-19th-century America.þþThe pickets include cooks, bartenders and waiters whom the club fired last summer — illegally, they say — a few weeks after the club signed a new contract with their union. They accuse the club, which hired a Long Island catering company to take over its restaurant and bar operations, of negotiating the contract in bad faith.þþThe union, Local 6 of Unite Here, took the workers’ case to an arbitrator, Ira Drogin, who largely agreed with the workers. He issued a 22-page opinion in January in which he said the club had broken its agreement with the union, as well as federal labor law, by getting rid of the workers and bringing in the catering company. þþAfter ordering the club to stop using the catering company at its clubhouse on Gramercy Park, he said that if the club wanted to resume restaurant and bar service, it would have to offer to reinstate the fired workers. He also ordered the club to make the 16 workers “whole” — meaning, the union says, the club would have to pay them the salaries and benefits they would have earned in the six months since they were let go.þþThe club went to court on Tuesday, challenging Mr. Drogin’s decision. The club said in papers filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that he had overstepped his authority. It also took issue with his reading of the club’s union contract when he said one clause did not give the club’s management the right to contract out work that had been done by union employees. þþThe club also asserted in the court papers that by ordering the club to stop subcontracting its food and beverage service, he had directed the club to breach a contract — not with the union, but with the catering company, Elegant Affairs New York of Glen Cove, N.Y.þþPeter C. Ward, the president of Local 6, accused the club of “out and out belligerence,” first in dismissing the workers and then in taking issue with the arbitrator’s decision.þþ“We’re not about putting them out of business,” Mr. Ward said, “we’re about coexisting to our mutual advantage.”þþThe club’s Web site lists the actor Timothy Hutton as the president. He did not respond to messages left with his agent, who said he was busy shooting a film. The club’s executive director, John Martello, said the workers were let go because the club’s restaurant and bar operation was awash in red ink. þþ“We simply could no longer afford to stay in the food and beverage business,” he said, estimating that the club had lost nearly $1.7 million over five years on the food and beverage operations. “These losses are crippling.”þþAsked whether the club planned to follow the arbitrator’s decision and reinstate the workers, he said: “The arbitrator gave us options. We’re considering them.”þþThe union says the fight is unusual in the club’s long history, which includes providing an early meeting place for the organizers of Actors Equity, the union that represents stage actors and stage managers. þþ“The irony certainly does not escape me,” Mr. Martello said, “especially since I’m a member of three unions myself”: Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and Aftra, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He performed his own one-man show, “Damon Runyon’s Tales of Broadway,” in a theater on Vandam Street in 1991.þþThe Players Club has had its famous names: Mark Twain and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman were among its incorporators; the town house was remodeled by Stanford White, the architect who left his imprint on so much of New York in the Gilded Age; and the current membership roll includes Lauren Bacall, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Walter Cronkite, Rue McClanahan and Liv Ullman.þþMr. Martello said that roll has had its ups and downs, but he said membership had increased since the club replaced the Local 6 workers. He said the club had gotten rid of the workers “as a way of maintaining the level of service to members.”þþ“That’s the only reason we did it,” he said.þþHe disputed the arbitrator’s conclusion that the club had breached its agreement with Local 6. “We’ve never broken the union contract,” Mr. Martello said. “We’re honoring the union contract. We still have three union employees on the payroll.” (The union says they are the club’s doormen and housemen.)þþMr. Ward said Local 6 had worked out arrangements with other clubs that had run into financial trouble and would have listened to the Players Club, had it approached the union before firing the workers. (Mr. Martello said he traded voice mail messages with another union official once the club began exploring transferring the food and beverage operation to Elegant Affairs.)þþ“If this is about saving money,” Mr. Ward said, “they’re surely not doing that. This is such a comedy of errors.”þþ
Source: NY Times
