Listen: NYC Stage Actors Rally with AFL-CIO Prez Ahead of Contract Push

New York labor leaders, along with AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler (fist upraised), rally with members of Actors’ Equity in Times Square on April 20.

By Bob Hennelly

A steady rain in Times Square this past Wednesday couldn’t dampen the enthusiasm of hundreds of union activists who gathered to welcome the national AFL-CIO’s “It’s Better in a Union” bus tour. The high profile rally to support the LIVE Broadway heavily unionized workforce came as union negotiators prepare to take on the powerful Broadway League in what is expected to be tough bargaining.

"Our country's workers are working hard all the time—we don't always see it," Brooke Shields, the newly elected President of Actors’ Equity, told an audience clutching umbrellas. "The actors and stage hands—all the people that make these shows come to live eight times a week—they are busting their ass for you, they really are and they have families...and they need to be taken care of--they need to be compensated as do our sibling union members who also bring Broadway to life."

Shields continued, "It's also better in a union because we are not alone. We stand together. There are 51,000 of us in Actors Equity. Our work has value, we are valued, and we need to be compensated for that value. We work really hard."

In addition to compensation and healthcare, safe staffing and scheduling loom large as issues.

The Actors Equity leader recalled earlier in her career having to dance injured on a torn meniscus for three months. "That's not okay," she told the crowd.

Broadway did see a massive post-pandemic rebound in the 2024-2025 season with a record-setting $1.8 billion box office haul, which included a ticket market that supported on occasion an $800 ticket price. However, a $400 million dollar New York State tax credit crafted in the throes of COVID, the NYC Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit, is set to expire this fall.

The end of the Albany support comes amidst a projected steep decline in international tourism passing through New York City as the Trump anti-immigrant and foreign traveler crackdowns take hold. Broadway employers are also likely to be squeezed by massive hikes in healthcare costs and electricity rates.

Other speakers at the rally broadcast LIVE on WBAI radio included AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, Edward A. Kelly, president of the International Association of Firefighters, NYC Central Labor Council President Brendan Griffith, NYS AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento, as well asEquity Executive Director Al Vincent Jr.

In a wide-ranging interview after the rally, Shuler warned America's workers "were under assault" no matter what industry they are in noting that the Trump administration's zeroing out of federal workers collective bargaining rights was the "largest act of union busting in history."

Project 2025, the Trump administration's blueprint for Trump 2.0, produced by the radical right wing Heritage Foundation, calls for the complete elimination of public sector unions as well as the rolling back of existing health, occupational safety and labor regulations and protections.

Much of that is already underway.

Prior to President Reagan's mass firing of 13,000 striking air traffic controllers in the early 1980s, 20 percent of America's workforce was in a union. After Reagan's move, that dropped to just ten percent as private employers were emboldened to break union strikes in their respective industries.

Today, just six percent of the nation's private workforce is unionized while less than a third of public sector workers are in a union.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unionized workers earn about 10 to 20 percent more than the workers that are not represented. Multiple independent studies have also documented that unionized workplaces are safer for workers.

Listen to the entire show below: