The Worker’s View: Behind the Local 12 ‘Paw Patrol’ demonstration

If you drove past the Wexner Center for the Arts the weekend of Feb. 14, you likely saw members of IATSE Local 12, the Columbus chapter of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, staging an informational picket outside of Mershon Auditorium. The union workers persisted through rain, snow, and freezing temperatures, holding signs that read “OSU Unfair to Local Labor.” 

It’s not often IATSE members are stationed outside of the venue because, as Brian Thomas, the business manager for Local 12, said, “If we’re doing our job properly, you’ll never know we’re there. We’re the people in black running around backstage. … We’ve always had a good working relationship with OSU, which is what’s so disheartening about this.” 

This being the “Paw Patrol” shows that took place at the Mershon Auditorium on Saturday and Sunday, Feb. 15 and 16. IATSE Local 12 has been working with the Mershon since the venue opened in the late 1950s, and the Wex has operated the auditorium since 1989, so Local 12 has had a working agreement with the Wex since then. For years, whenever there was a labor call for stagehands, Local 12 would contact its members to fill that labor call. However, Thomas said that administrative and policy changes OSU made after the return to in-person work following the pandemic lockdown have strained this relationship. 

“Post-pandemic, almost all our employers who do direct pay, including OSU, needed to re-onboard everyone because it had been 18 months since we’d worked,” Thomas said. “This meant re-onboarding people who have been signed up with OSU [for] probably 10, 20, 30, maybe even 40 years. But it had to be done.” 

Local 12 was happy to re-onboard, but Thomas said the link to complete this process was often unavailable when he tried to share it with Local 12 members, which left them in a lurch. 

“We were worried that if we got a larger labor call, we wouldn’t be able to fill it with the re-onboarding process taking so long. Because it takes upwards of two weeks for the background and security checks, and a lot of times, we don’t get the labor calls until, at best, maybe a week before. That puts us in a bind,” Thomas said. “OSU HR had been trying to put up the onboarding link, and sometimes it worked, but a lot of times it didn’t. So, they’d put it up, take it down, put it up, take it down. This happened multiple times.”

The issue was so pervasive that Local 12 offered a temporary fix: OSU could instead use Local 12’s payroll service, the Theatrical Payroll Service of Central Ohio (TPSCO).  This allowed the union to open its full roster of workers to Ohio State, including those who had not yet been able to complete the onboarding process. “Let’s say you have a 10-person call. Five of the people are directly onboarded with OSU. … The other five people are not onboarded with OSU, but they get funneled through TPSCO,” Thomas said. “We operated that way for over two years with no issues.” 

That is, until the “Paw Patrol” show. On Feb. 12, two days before load in and set up for the show, Local 12 received notice that OSU would no longer allow the use of TPSCO. Combined with the inability to onboard as needed, Local 12 was rendered unable to fill the labor call for 37 stagehands. 

Ohio State didn’t respond to specific emailed questions about the availability of the onboarding link or the decision to no longer utilize TPSCO, with university spokesperson Ben Johnson instead providing a statement that read, “Ohio State employee stagehands are IATSE members. In cases where not enough university employees signed up to work, the university works with an approved external vendor to fill the vacancies.” 

In an internal email obtained by Matter News, OSU’s Head of Finance and Administration explained the situation to employees at the Wex, writing, “The Wexner Center (WCA) must use Ohio State University (OSU) employees or contracted workers through an external approved vendor to support our performances and other related events. WCA reached out to OSU employees first to fill this call, and not enough employees signed up (as they are casual employees and not required to work any given show).” 

On the same day Local 12 was told OSU would no longer use TPSCO, Thomas said he learned the university had already placed a call to B.A.S.H. LLC, a non-union labor provider out of Cincinnati that occasionally supplements work at the Schottenstein Center. This is important context, Thomas said, because IATSE Local 12 helped to organize the workers at the Schott, and the union vote closed on Tuesday, Feb. 11 – just one day before the labor call for “Paw Patrol.”

Thomas said organizing effort at the Schott began in 2023, and the card collection was filed with the State Employee Relations Board (SERB) in November of that year with workers voting 44-27 in favor of unionizing. The bargaining unit would cover 106 employees at the Schott whose work falls under the IATSE umbrella. 

“Our agreement with Wexner Center for the Arts is one of our oldest and most long-standing agreements,” Thomas said. “For them to pull this feels retaliatory for the Schott.” 

While non-union labor providers might save a client money, they do so by paying employees less, not offering benefits – no retirement or healthcare – and sometimes even giving the workers a 1099, which makes them responsible for their own taxes. “I can’t tell you how many calls I’ve gotten over the years from stagehands getting screwed on their taxes,” said Thomas, who added that these non-union laborers typically aren’t covered by worker’s compensation if they get injured on the job. “And a lot of these people don’t have $500 for an ER visit.” 

Despite the turbulent recent experience, Thomas said IATSE Local 12 wants to continue its relationship with the Wex and OSU, and that the demonstration outside of Mershon Auditorium on “Paw Patrol” weekend was an informational picket to raise public awareness and not a formal strike or work stoppage. Having just celebrated 30 years with IATSE Local 12 – more than half of his life – he hopes it won’t have to come to that.