NEW YORK (AFP) - The fabled lights of Broadway dimmed Saturday as stagehands walked out, the second labor crisis in a week to rock the powerhouse U.S. entertainment industry on the heels of a separate film and TV writers' strike.
The stagehands' strike plunged Broadway into the dark as the backstage workers pushed for a pay raise, producers and theater owners said.
"They have chosen to strike, without notifying us, rather than to continue negotiating. It is a sad day for Broadway, but we must remain committed to achieving a fair contract," said Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the League of American Theatres and Producers.
The strike will have an economic impact of $17 million (11.5 million euros) per day in direct and indirect costs, St. Martin said.
The league and the union have been negotiating since June but have not reached a contract deal. The disagreement centers on the league's demand for flexibility in determining how many stagehands are needed for a job to avoid paying for idle workers.
"Our goal is simple: to pay for workers we need and for work that is actually performed. Stagehands are highly skilled and... the highest paid stagehands in the theatrical world," St. Martin said.
The union, with about 2,200 members, maintains that theater owners have been unclear about what offsetting benefits stagehands can have in return.
Broadway draws millions of foreign tourists each year and is considered one of New York City's primary attractions. It brings in five billion dollars annually to the city and employs some 45,000 full-time workers.
Industry experts say that more than 12 million people attended Broadway shows in 2006-2007, and that ticket sales were up 8.9 percent in the season.
"It is in everyone's interest for both sides to come together and resolve their differences," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
"I have spoken to both the theatre owners and the stagehands and the city continues to stand ready to help in any way we can."
All but eight Broadway shows were to be shuttered.
"Cymbeline," "Mary Poppins," "Mauritius," "Pygmalion," "The Ritz," "Young Frankenstein," "Xanadu" and "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee" are excluded because they are in theaters which have a separate union contract, the owners' league said.
Saturday's trouble marked the second work stoppage on Broadway in less than five years. A four-day musicians' strike in 2003 was the first time since 1975 that a labor dispute hit Broadway.
And it was the second major stoppage to grip the industry in under a week.
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) downed pens Monday after last-ditch talks with Hollywood producers over the issue of payment from Internet sales and downloads broke down.
In Los Angeles Friday, more than 3,000 film and television writers demonstrated with no prospect of a resolution in sight.
Thousands of writers brandishing placards and clad in red T-shirts gathered outside Fox Studios in Century City to protest, the biggest single demonstration since the strike began.
The writers' stance has earned sympathy from many celebrities, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus of "Seinfeld" fame, "Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria and Kelsey Grammer of "Cheers" and "Frasier," who also attended Friday's rally.
"Now people are, you know, drawing their lines and I'm hoping that the lines can be blurred enough that people come back together and start talking," Grammer told ABC7. "It affects the economy of Los Angeles."
The industrial action is the first by the WGA in nearly 20 years and has plunged the industry into turmoil, halting production on hit television shows like "Desperate Housewives" and forcing the postponement of "24."
Popular late-night chat shows hosted by Jay Leno and David Letterman have also gone into shutdown this week because of the strike, which industry analysts believe may last several months.
Most major movie studios have sought to insulate themselves from the strike by stockpiling scripts. However the longer the dispute goes on, the greater the risk of film productions being disrupted.
