FIVE Picturehouse cinemas are on strike this May Day.
In a repeat of one of the largest strikes in UK cinema history in April, five Picturehouse cinemas are striking again simultaneously today, Monday 1 May. Workers from Picturehouse Central, the Ritzy, Hackney Picturehouse, Crouch End Picturehouse and East Dulwich Picturehouse are striking for a total of 24 hours.
Workers at Picturehouse cinemas have been striking since last September for the Living Wage (currently £9.75 in London, £8.45 elsewhere, as set by the Living Wage Foundation) and for management to recognise their union, BECTU.
Picturehouse continue to refuse negotiations despite owner Cineworld announcing £93.8 million post-tax profit for 2016. Today’s action will take the total number of strike days at Picturehouse cinemas in the last eight months to over forty.
The strike coincides with International Workers Day, a day to highlight campaigns for workers’ rights and celebrate past successes. Picturehouse workers from all five striking sites are convening at the rally at Clerkenwell Green at 12pm, to join the march to Trafalgar Square.
Kelly Rogers, a BECTU Rep at the Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton, will be giving a speech at 2:30pm alongside John McDonnell MP and representatives from other unions. At 4pm, Picturehouse strikers will move to Picturehouse Central on the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Great Windmill Street, Piccadilly, London W1, and protest outside the cinema until 7pm.
Andrea Cencioni, Front of House at Central said: ‘At Central, staff believe they deserve to get paid the London Living Wage. We also believe in our right to a union of our choice, which supports all workers in the cinema industry, and to be provided with improved sick pay/ maternity/ paternity and adoption pay.
‘We know that Cineworld can afford to negotiate with us on our requests for better working conditions. May the 1st is about justice, a more equal distribution of profit and taking a significant step towards a fairer society.’
In most cases, Picturehouse have opted to keep cinemas open during strikes, drafting in workers (including managerial staff) from other cinemas. In advance of strikes that took place on March 31st, Picturehouse undertook a nationwide advertising campaign looking for new staff.
They hired and trained a group of workers who were then asked to work their first shifts covering the withdrawn labour of their colleagues. The new staff were told they would not be working at any one specific cinema (unlike most Picturehouse staff who are assigned to one cinema in particular) and that they needed to be available for work at short notice.
Alisdair Cairns, from Hackney Picturehouse commented: ‘It felt pretty vindictive of Picturehouse to plaster a giant job advertisement all over our front doors when we had been told by managers that we weren’t hiring. We assumed it was so they could publicly declare how much we’re paid, although we don’t think paying below the Living Wage is anything for them to be proud of.
‘As it turns out they were recruiting strike-breakers, which is even worse! We feel really bad for the new staff, who hadn’t even been told there would be a strike on that day. What an awful position to be put in without proper warning. It’s so not an acceptable way for Picturehouse to introduce new staff to the company.’
Members of the campaign have been calling for a public boycott of Picturehouse and their owners Cineworld since 25th February and this has been endorsed by many film industry names including Susan Sarandon and Sir Patrick Stewart.
High profile support for the boycott of Picturehouse and Cineworld has also come from Sir Mark Rylance, Ken Loach, Elizabeth Berrington, Jo Brand, Mark Cousins, Richard Curtis, Natalie Dormer, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Deller, Nick Frost, Caitlin Moran, Michael Palin, Tony Robinson, Andy Serkis, Mark Thomas, Ricky Tomlinson, Indira Varma, Irvine Welsh, John McDonnell MP.
London mayor Sadiq Kahn wrote to Cineworld CEO Moshe Greidinger in January 2017 urging him ‘to do everything possible to ensure all staff receive the London Living Wage’.
Members of BECTU, the cinema workers’ union, at the Ritzy, Hackney, Crouch End and Picturehouse Central voted 96.8% in favour of industrial action against Picturehouse and Cineworld’s refusal to negotiate on demands for: London Living Wage; Company sick pay for all; Company maternity/paternity/adoption pay; Pay rises for supervisors, managers, chefs, projectionists and sound technicians.
The Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton voted 100% in favour of strike action. East Dulwich Picturehouse voted 88% in favour of strike action with a 94% turnout. Workers at the Duke of York’s, Hackney Picturehouse, Picturehouse Central, East Dulwich Picturehouse and Crouch End Picturehouse also seek recognition for their chosen union, the BECTU Sector of Prospect.
This would mean that the company would agree to meet regularly with BECTU Sector of Prospect members and representatives to negotiate over pay and conditions.Picturehouse has threatened their workers and their union, the BECTU Sector of Prospect, with legal action over unfounded claims including unlawful picketing, intimidating behaviour, and playing ‘racial music’ on picket lines.
Over the summer of 2014, Ritzy cinema workers went on strike 13 times for the London Living Wage, and secured a 26% pay rise, but continue to be paid at a rate below the London Living Wage, £9.10 p/hr. Workers at other London Picturehouses are paid only £9.05 p/hr.
Cineworld Cinemas 2016 post-tax profit was £93.8 million. CEO Mooky Greidinger’s pay package totalled £2.5 million, accounting for salary, bonuses, travel expenses etc. Earlier in the dispute, strikes at both the Ritzy and Hackney Picturehouses led to the cancellation of a number of BFI London Film Festival screenings, and the strikers rallied outside a number of high-profile festival events.
At the UK premiere of his new film, I, Daniel Blake, in Liverpool on 24th September 2016, director Ken Loach said: ‘The Ritzy strikers are heroic. ‘Picturehouse is owned by Cineworld which is a big multinational corporation. They make fortunes. The idea that they pay starvation wages because they can get people who are desperate for work is absolutely shocking. Victory to the Ritzy strikers, no doubt.’
