The labor union representing stagehands at the Kennedy Center has reached an agreement with the arts center, avoiding a strike and allowing the first performance of Hadestown to take place as expected.

Members of IATSE Local 22 announced Saturday that members accepted and ratified a new labor contract at the Kennedy Center two days after authorizing a strike. The new contract “includes modest wage and benefit increases, as well as a jurisdictional expansion and a codified COVID safety protocol framework,” the union posted on Twitter.

The contract extends through 2023. Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter told the Washington Post that the deal addresses both the stagehands’ needs and the financial realities facing the arts center after months of pandemic-induced challenges.

“This was a long hard slog, but we now have a contract we can live with that protects our members and gives the Kennedy Center the relief it needs to recover from the pain caused by the pandemic,” David McIntyre, the union’s president, said in a statement.

Original story:

The October run of the award-winning Broadway hit Hadestown is uncertain in D.C., as negotiations between the Kennedy Center and the union representing its stagehands have stalled, the parties announced Thursday.

Members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 22 and Kennedy Center leaders met over Zoom for 16 hours on Wednesday night, but the talks remained unfruitful.

“If I don’t have the tentative agreement that I can take to my membership to vote on to ratify at our meeting on Saturday, then I don’t see any way that the first performance of Hadestown can happen,” David McIntyre, the union’s president, told DCist.

The contract expired last September, and in the time since, the two parties have butted heads over proposed wage cuts, overtime, and more.

“We’ve been working without a contract for a year, and management from the Kennedy Center gave us no indication that they wanted to change any aspect of what they were doing,” McIntyre says. “We are not interested in going back to business as usual without a contract.”

Hadestown is scheduled to run from Oct. 13-31, but the union said it will pull its labor from the show if favorable terms aren’t presented by the weekend. As the Washington Post reported, a vote for a strike doesn’t guarantee one will happen.

In a statement, the Kennedy Center said that all shows will go on as scheduled until further notice, and that it is “disappointed” by the failed negotiations.

The center argues that the stagehands are planning to strike over a single issue: the union’s jurisdiction.

“We have cooperatively resolved all other issues, including wages, benefits, and COVID-19 protocols,” the Kennedy Center statement reads. “The union has demanded that the Center agree to expand the union’s jurisdiction, requiring the Kennedy Center to exclusively use IATSE stagehands for not only events held at the Center, but also in programming we present beyond our campus. This would entail a fundamental shift in how we manage, staff, and budget for extended programming, impacting both events held in the community and outside events held at the Kennedy Center.”

The center says changes to the jurisdiction agreement would force it to make cuts to its programming and raise costs for rentals during a time when it’s already faced with major financial constraints.

The Kennedy Center had a $9 million deficit this past fiscal year and is projected to lose another $7 million in 2022. In 2020, the center canceled much of its programming and laid off hundreds of hourly part-time workers.

The union disagrees with the Kennedy Center’s assessment of the situation.

“The idea that that we’re down to one issue is ridiculous,” McIntyre says. “We still haven’t agreed to a wage package. They still want to remove overtime conditions. You know, they’re still looking to make long-term cuts that that would last beyond this contract.”

McIntyre says his union represents about 400 stagehands, but many members have moved away to more affordable parts of the country while they’ve been out of work.

“Through this pandemic, every other major venue in and around Washington has managed to successfully maintain their agreements with our union and work with us to prepare for the return of audiences — the Kennedy Center is the one exception,” McIntyre said in a statement. “Putting on a Broadway show, any show, is a team effort, the Kennedy Center’s managers will have a hell of a time putting on Hadestown without us.”