Alamo Drafthouse workers in St. Louis are a QR code away from unionizing 

The bargaining unit has filed three unfair labor practices since April for what staff describes as “union busting activity,” including management instructing employees not to wear union buttons to work. The NLRB has since ruled in the workers’ favor, allowing them to wear pro-labor buttons. Neither the Alamo Drafthouse nor the location’s franchisees responded to our requests for comment. 

An “overwhelming majority” of the staff signed cards in support of organizing, and, in May, the staff reached out to the United Auto Workers (UAW), which had an Alamo winning streak behind them. “Most of their issues are non-economic,” UAW organizer Clint McGill tells The A.V. Club. “The QR code was a big deal, and [management] rolled it out without any input from the workers, and it directly affected them. When they roll out things like that unilaterally, it creates an issue not only with the workers, but the community. It’s a big issue, and [management has] just chosen to ignore it.”

Jacob Katz, a shift lead at the Drafthouse City Foundry, tells The A.V. Club by phone that scheduling has become a major issue. “We need to base our lives around the scheduling of the Alamo because they require certain availability,” Katz says. “As a movie theater, their schedules go from Friday or Thursday, but with how they’re distributed right now, we don’t know what we’re doing on a Friday until Wednesday night.”

Even during this summer’s blockbuster movie season, the Alamo doesn’t release its schedule until hours before staff is expected to be back at the building. “We’ve asked for minimum notice because a lot of people have come into work, and then been informed that their shift was cut,” Katz continues. “We’ve had multiple sold-out theaters all at the same time, showing Odyssey and Spider-Man, with other movies like Toy Story 5 bringing kids and parents in. Some days we were staffed adequately. There were even more where [attendance] would jump up at the end of the night, and we’d be like, ‘Well, I guess we’re not gonna sit down for four hours, and then we’re still gonna have to clean. I’ll just get home at 3:30 in the morning.'”

“It becomes incredibly difficult to schedule second jobs or social obligations or anything. I’m a shift lead, and I’ve got 13 hours this week. How do you plan second jobs or pay the bills when you cannot plan your week in advance?”

While most of their issues aren’t economic, staffers describe gratuity issues that recall the uglier tactics of the gig economy, citing confusing receipt items that employees believe dissuade moviegoers from leaving gratuity. “We have the service fee here in St. Louis,” says Allgood. “It’s 18% added on to everyone’s check; that portion goes to the company. A lot of [customers] see that as a gratuity. We don’t actually see that money. They say it goes to pay our wages. Whenever we raise our menu prices, we don’t see a raise. So there’s some discrepancy there.” Unfortunately, the employees have “no real HR at our location” to field these complaints. “It creates the illusion that people are tipping, and our guests think it’s a tip. But in reality, that money is going to the corporation or the franchisee.”

On September 30 and October 1, the 110-person staff will hold an election to formalize the union and allow UAW to represent the workers for bargaining. “We just want to be excited to come into work,” Katz says. “We want to feel like we are cared for, and because we haven’t been given avenues to discuss this with the owners, we feel like this is the next best strategy, and the one in which we have the most agency.”