Help Striking Drafthouse United Workers!

Support the workers at the South Lamar Alamo Drafthouse as they strike for a living wage and respect from Drafthouse corporate management!

https://duf.iww.org/

Drafthouse United, the union that represents workers at the South Lamar Drafthouse, is engaging in a 1-day strike to protest the lack of fulfillment of our reasonable demands for a living wage and pay transparency. By donating to this fund, you will help striking workers defray the wages lost while on strike, and help provide support like cold water for strikers and their supporters as they will be demonstrating outside on a day projected to reach at least 100 degrees.

Drafthouse United started from humble beginnings with few workers joining together to organize against the difficult working conditions at their theater: under-staffing, long double shifts, apathy from the upper management team, and health code violations are only some of the issues that workers at the South Lamar Drafthouse have been facing. These are not new problems - we have been bringing these up to our management for months and years in some cases, and have been met only with empty promises and platitudes. Until we started organizing, that is.

We grew quickly, gaining supporters and allies, despite the difficulty of a high turnover rate: So many employees quit or are fired every week that our crew at South Lamar is constantly changing and new people have to be approached. Despite the risks of retaliation from management and the obstacles, the workers of Drafthouse United made good progress and we went public in February of this year (2022).

Since then, the struggle has been even harder as Alamo Drafthouse has hired an infamous union-busting law firm called “Fisher-Phillips law firm” to combat our efforts to improve the workplace. This was a clear sign of the hypocrisy of Corporate leadership that told us they couldn't afford to pay us living wages while also hiring expensive Union Busters to slow us down.

Finally, we reached a breaking point. The releases of Summer Blockbuster movies that we had to face with a skeleton crew left everyone tired, angry, and still just as underpaid. Drafthouse United sent a clear letter of demanding a living wage for all employees and a clear, reasonable deadline. The demand was ignored and the deadline has now passed with our wages unchanged. We have heard “promises” of future wage increases, but corporate leadership has provided no evidence on paper that these are anything more than empty promises.

The union organizers conducted a vote and elected to move forward with a Sick-Out: A day where all workers call in sick to protest how under-paid we are by a company that prides itself in "giving a shit" and "doing the right thing". This action comes at a risk and at a cost as we risk getting (illegally) fired for this group action and we will lose on the wages we would have made on that day. We are also attempting to curtail business on this day as much as possible, to send a message to corporate leadership without guests or middle management getting caught in the middle. This is where you come in.

You too can be part of the history of our union by helping the workers who struggle to pay the rent in a city that constantly raises the price of living here. We call for your solidarity and help in this decisive moment.

Please help support the workers who are bravely taking a stand against indifferent and dismissive corporate leadership who have consistently ignored our requests and demands. By donating to this fund, you can help defray the wages lost by the workers participating in this strike, and support providing supplies (like water, flyers, etc.) for the striking workers.

The workers of Drafthouse United stand strong together. We love the Drafthouse, and wish that our corporate leadership would listen to what their worker need.