Another group of Oregon Shakespeare Festival workers has joined International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 154.
Roughly 45 ushers, concessions staff, and other audience experience workers joined Local 154 in November in a 28-2 vote, uniting with around 150 other festival workers who unionized over the past decade.
New managers at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival have made changes that benefit the workers, said Ford Murawski-Brown, an usher who has worked in various departments for more than a decade, aside from a break during the pandemic. But in the past, new managers have sometimes made changes for the worse, Murawski-Brown said.
“The biggest thing that I would like to see is getting down the status quo on paper, and then working from that baseline to improve in the areas that could use small improvements,” Murawski-Brown said. “It seems like a much better position for us to negotiate for what we have, as opposed to fighting to get back what we had.”
Ushers make $16.17 an hour, while concessions workers make $15.45.
“To harbor world class theater, it requires a world class audience services team, which we have. I think that our pay should reflect our world class status,” Murawski-Brown said.
The 2025 season is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 90th anniversary. The festival has been rebuilding since the pandemic and wildfires caused shutdowns. In 2023, at least three top leaders resigned and nearly 20 workers were laid off or furloughed as part of what the festival described as a “restructuring strategy.” Gabriella Calicchio was announced as the new executive director on Sept. 17, 2024.
IATSE Local 154 business agent Breena Cope said the local currently has three contracts with the festival: one for custodial and maintenance workers; one for finance, accounting, and box office staff; and one for production staff, which the newly unionized group intends to join. Roughly half of the festival’s employees are represented by Local 154.
Stagehands, sound and lighting technicians, wardrobe and wig crews, and other backstage workers were the first group of Oregon Shakespeare Festival workers to join IATSE, forming a union of roughly 70 members in 2015. Smaller units joined in the past three years, starting with around 16 scenery and prop makers in January 2022, then 11 custodial and maintenance workers, then four finance and accounting workers, and then a dozen box office employees in July 2024.
The festival runs from spring through fall, so most employees are seasonal workers. Unionized workers receive notice months in advance that they’ll be hired for the next season. For non-represented employees, managers decide who to bring back and when to notify them, Cope said.
Local 154 had one failed vote in the past decade, when costume department employees voted 25-21 against joining the union in 2018.
Actors in the festival’s productions have always been union and are represented by Actors’ Equity.
