Stagehands head calls on Helen Gym to move her Bernie Sanders rally to a unionized venue
The labor group called on the Philly mayoral candidate not to host the event at Franklin Music Hall, which is nonunion.
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The union that represents Philadelphia stagehands is demanding mayoral candidate Helen Gym move a Sunday rally she has planned with former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders because the venue is not unionized.
The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 8 made the public request Friday in a highly politicized environment just four days ahead of the Tuesday primary election. The local has endorsed grocer Jeff Brown for mayor, and it is part of the city’s Building Trades and Construction Council, which is backing Cherelle Parker.
The rally is set for Sunday at Franklin Music Hall, the former Electric Factory, in the city’s Callowhill section. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) is also set to make an appearance alongside Gym, a progressive former City Council member who is one of five front-runners for the Democratic nomination for mayor.
Local 8 president Michael Barnes and building trades business manager Ryan Boyer said in a joint statement that the public request was a “last resort.”
“This is where the rubber meets the road,” Barnes said Friday. “You can either have the integrity to do the right thing or just the willingness to say the right thing.”
Barnes and Boyer initially said that they reached out to Gym’s campaign and did not receive a response. But on Friday afternoon, Gym’s campaign said that it had spoken with Barnes and had been communicating with labor leaders about the issue for two days.
Brendan McPhillips, Gym’s campaign manager, characterized the situation as “a bad faith attempt by two individuals who are backing candidates falling in the polls to attempt to distract from the fact that Philadelphians are rallying around the only progressive candidate in the race for mayor.”
“Helen’s record on labor is clear,” McPhillips said in a statement. “She’s stood on more picket lines, passed more worker protections, and done more to support Philly’s labor movement than any other mayoral candidate by a mile.”
A poll released Friday showed Gym and Parker in a tight race with two other candidates, Rebecca Rhynhart and Allan Domb, while Brown trailed.
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Gym, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez have each built their political identities in large part around support for workers and organized labor. Gym is endorsed by the teachers union, a municipal workers union, and the union that represents hotel workers. On Friday afternoon, she joined a picket line alongside writers on strike outside Comcast’s Center City headquarters.
Rosslyn Wuchinich, president of Unite Here Local 274, which endorsed Gym, said her understanding is that the campaign looked into other venues of similar size and that they were already booked. She pointed out that Gym’s election night watch party will be held at a unionized hotel.
“This is a nonissue and feels like a political stunt,” Wuchinich said.
The planned rally is not the first time Sanders (Ind., Vt.) has appeared at Franklin Music Hall. In November, he headlined a get-out-the-vote rally there to drum up support for Democrats John Fetterman, who was running for Senate, and Josh Shapiro, who was running for governor. Both won their respective races.
The public spat is also not the first time Boyer has been critical of Gym. The Laborers District Council he leads contributed $25,000 to a new political group that is running attack ads against Gym.