Dozens of unionized Alamo Drafthouse Cinema workers laid off

As part of a nationwide wave of cuts at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, 70 unionized workers at two locations in New York City were laid off Monday, the workers’ union, Local 2179 of the United Auto Workers, said. 

In response to the layoffs at the dine-in theater chain, the union filed an unfair labor practice charge and voted with 98 percent support to authorize a strike, union members said.

Employees were given several weeks' notice of the planned layoffs and met with Alamo management four times to try and reach an agreement that could reduce staff hours across the board in a bid to avoid the firings of dozens of union members, workers and Local 2179 officials said. But at the conclusion of negotiations last Friday, management declared an impasse, and the chain signaled it would be moving forward with laying off 30 union workers at a Manhattan location and 40 at a Brooklyn location.

In response, union members quickly voted to authorize a strike and filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB alleging that Alamo management bargained in bad faith over the layoffs and wasn't properly providing the union with information, according to the filing,

On Monday evening, after the layoffs were announced, union members formed informational picket lines outside of the two Alamo locations while movies played inside. The workers have not yet gone on strike and are not asking their supporters to boycott Alamo, but a walkout could be imminent, they said.

A spokesperson for Alamo Drafthouse Cinema did not respond to a request for comment. The chain, purchased by Sony Pictures Entertainment last June, also laid off 15 corporate staffers as part of the widespread cuts.   

‘Like a family’ 

Ariana Mottaghian, a bartender who’s worked for six months at the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Brooklyn, found out that she was losing her job in a Monday morning phone call. She said her firing came as a shock even though she knew some workers would be let go. 

“It's just such an unfortunate situation that no matter when I got the news it was going to devastate me,” Mottaghian told The Chief while on the picket line.  

"I actually loved working here,” she said while battling back tears. “It was one of the first places that felt like family to me." 

Movie theaters typically see reduced traffic in the first quarter as the holiday releases ebb and award season attention recedes, but the workers insisted that their theater was still doing well in the new year.  

"I work in the box office and can tell you that people are buying tickets,” Jordan Baruch, a concierge and member of the union’s bargaining committee, said Monday evening. “We are improving every quarter one, year over year. "   

Staff at Alamo Brooklyn were often overworked and understaffed even before the layoffs, he argued. “Yesterday was a very busy day and we were incredibly understaffed,” Baruch added. "It's going to be a lot harder to fill shifts now when we have 40 less people at this theater." 

Theater management, however, insisted at the bargaining table that the theater had too much staff for the foot traffic and revenue expected to be generated from the slate of movies offered in next few months, said Will Bobrowski, a vice president of Local 2179. Bobrowski explained that entertainment businesses are still feeling the effects of the monthslong SAG-AFTRA and writers guild strike in 2023 that delayed production on many movies and led to a decrease in content output.  

To try and support the workers while keeping the business functioning, union negotiators told their Alamo counterparts that they would be open to reducing workers' hours to 16 a week on average to ward off layoffs of dozens of workers. Following that proposal, management unilaterally declared an impasse and ended bargaining, according to Bobrowski.  

“The entire bargaining unit is outraged,” he said. “The 80 percent who are left behind, all of the work is going to fall on them. They're already understaffed.” 

When bargaining over layoffs, management provided data to try and explain their decision to enact layoffs but Baruch said that the projections and financial statistics that management's lawyers shared "did not prove the necessity for this layoff.” 

The workers are without a union contract, having failed to reach an agreement with management a year after bargaining began. The two sides have yet to discuss economic topics for that contract, Baruch said.

Adding to workers' confusion is that five new theaters were opened at Alamo’s Brooklyn location in the last year and several others were renovated. With fewer staff members, fewer of those theaters will be able to show movies at any given time, which Baruch argued will lead to business “suffering immensely.” 

Workers wouldn’t say when they'll go on strike, but they said they plan to do whatever it takes to support their coworkers who lost their jobs. “To see their support just validates how real these people are and how much this job has been impacting us,” Mottaghian said.