AMC Theatres’ Workers at Universal City Location Attempt to Unionize

The latest coming attraction for Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood? A union election at the National Labor Relations Board.

On Feb. 20, the crew union IATSE petitioned the NLRB for an election to determine if 44 staffers at the Universal City location will decide to join their ranks. The union is attempting to represent a broad swath of roles — including ushers, cooks, bartenders, janitors and others — at the sprawling, 19-theater location, situated on the same campus as the Universal Studios theme park.

The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to AMC Theatres for comment.

While AMC theaters are not broadly unionized, IATSE says it has previously organized an array of staffers at one other location in the chain in the U.S., the AMC Dine-In South Bay Galleria 16 in Redondo Beach.

According to IATSE, top issues for the group of workers organizing the drive are improving wages and scheduling practices. The CityWalk workers were also motivated by a pay raise recently given to managers but not to rank-and-file workers, who have not received wage increases in some time, per the union.

In the last few years, union organizing has picked up at a small number of movie theaters. New York City has been a hotspot of this activity, with Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives and Alamo Drafthouse locations in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn all recently joining United Auto Workers Locals. (In early February, staffers at Nitehawk Cinema in Prospect Park also petitioned to unionize.) Staffers at Amherst Cinema in Amherst, Massachusetts have also successfully unionized.