Actors’ Equity Association members ratified a new three-year labor contract with the Broadway League.
Out of 1,456 votes cast, 71% voted yes and 29% voted no, according to a person familiar with the vote. Just under 3,300 Equity members who’ve worked on Broadway or in a “sit-down production” outside New York since September 2019 were eligible to vote.
The new contract includes 3% annual raises, with the Broadway minimum salary immediately increasing to $2,717 from $2,638. The new stage manager minimum for a musical is $4,464 and $3,837 for a play. Equity told its members it bested the League’s opening proposal of a raise of just over 1% a year, but the agreed-upon 3% falls short of the 4.3% average annual increase in the previous contract.
Equity achieved its top priority of fortifying the health plan it co-manages with the League. After years of productions contributing $150 a week per person toward the plan, the League agreed to annual increases of $25, which amounts to a 50% jump by 2027.
Additionally, when actors and stage managers work 13 or more consecutive performances without a day off, they’re eligible for a paid day off — the first personal day in the history of the production contract.
Producers gained more control over the process of determining the number of principal and chorus roles per musical. Equity said in an internal memo that the change “is really just a formalized acknowledgement of how things currently work in practice: producers issue contracts to members with job category designations before Equity is ever able to evaluate the productions or issue its determinations.”
Separately, principals may be assigned to perform chorus functions in four numbers; previously, principals could be required to perform chorus functions in up to two numbers.
With most shows, producers can now use a QR code to announce an understudy in a performance instead of stuffing an insert in a Playbill. Some Equity members speculated that this could be an interim step toward ending the practice of ushers handing out free physical Playbills. Equity told its members that the League had sought permission to allow a fully digital Playbill.
That isn’t an aspiration of Playbill Inc., which printed the first Playbill in 1884. Playbill Chief Operating Officer Alex Birsh wrote in an email to Broadway Journal: “Regarding this being a ‘first step,’ we believe printed Playbills will continue to be distributed at theaters for another 141 years.”
