Art
Guthrie workers gather for a photo after a union meeting.

Guthrie Theater’s Front-of-House Workers Fight for a First Contract

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Eva Nereson, 23, has worked as a housekeeper at the iconic Guthrie Theater in downtown Minneapolis for the past three years, in both part- and full-time capacities. She describes her duties as cleaning “everything that people are likely to see when they come in and see a show at the Guthrie,” including the lobby, carpets, bathrooms, and inside the theater. 

In June, the front-of-house workers of the Guthrie, which includes guest services workers, box office staff, lounge hosts, janitors, and ushers, won their union with 70% of workers voting in favor. Represented by International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 13, the workers are preparing to bargain their first contract. 

They are fighting for wage increases, reinstatement of some positions that were cut, more transparency of pay tiers, scheduling hours two weeks in advance, additional safety training, and support with parking. Some positions, like ushers, work short shifts, and the cost of their wages for the day are eaten up almost entirely by the cost of parking in downtown Minneapolis, workers say. 

In interviews with Workday Magazine, they reflect on the importance of their role in the Twin Cities’ arts community—as many are frontline workers at multiple local venues, an increasingly unionized sector, and contribute as working artists themselves. 

Nereson describes the moment of calm after crowds of theater-goers rush in for a show: “It’s very zen for me.” In addition to working at the Guthrie, Nereson also works at the Minneapolis Park Board as an event attendant, and goes to school at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, where she also works with the school’s theater department. 

Nereson began working at the Guthrie in 2022, shortly after the theater reopened following the pandemic lockdowns. She has worked in other janitorial positions, and says when she first started it felt like “the best job I’d ever had.” The theater offered bonuses to workers, various benefits and perks, and had an overall very positive work culture, she recalls. 

However, as the months went by, Nereson says a lot of these perks faded away, with workers facing cuts to holiday pay and a decline in overtime approvals, alongside a reduction in full-time positions, which intensified the workload for the remaining workers.

Art
Kira Ross is a member of ATU Local 1005 and Metro Transit’s first black woman mechanic. Ross is photographed while working at the Haywood Garage in Minneapolis, posing next to a tool box. 

Still Lives of Workers in Motion

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“Archive in Motion: The ATU Workers of Metro Transit”, a photography exhibition, is on display at the East Side Freedom Library, in St. Paul, Minn. featuring the photographs of Leslie Grant and Jeffrey Skemp of the workers of Metro Transit. The exhibit features film photographs of various transit workers, represented by Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1005, honoring the essential work they do and the importance of public transit in bringing people together in a shared public space. 

The exhibition includes portraits of the workers while on the job, as well as still-life photographs of objects bus operators carry with them, photos and scans of archival finds and everyday transit ephemera, and the architecture that makes up the transit system—from the mundane yet necessary infrastructure, to the wooded landscapes of the Twin Cities urban parks. 

Leslie Grant, a photographer and professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and Jeffrey Skemp, photographer and poet, began the project on Metro Transit by contacting ATU Local 1005. The union then invited the photographers to join a meeting and present the project to the union members.