Home arrow Hot Topics arrow Eye on the NLRB arrow Blue Man's Unionbusting Betrays its Artistic Message
Share This
Close
  • Social Web
  • E-mail
E-mail It
Blue Man's Unionbusting Betrays its Artistic Message
Print
Written by Erin Johansson   
July 31, 2008

Sixteen years ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Blue Man Group’s original show in New York City.  I reveled in the drumming, marshmallow tossing, and sense of community the artists encouraged in the midst of the information overload of our time.  One longtime Blue Man summed up the show’s message in an interview with the Victoria Times Colonist in 2007:

We live in this technology age which connects us so amazingly... and yet, it's sort of made us more alone than we've ever been.

But Blue Man’s artistic vision for more personal connection is belied by its recent actions repressing its employees’ efforts to come together for a stronger voice at work. 

According to a recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board, the Blue Man Group’s company illegally barred its Las Vegas employees from freely discussing their working conditions, discriminated against a union supporter, and refused to recognize and bargain with the employees’ union—more than two years after they voted for representation.  These are typical violations of the law by anti-union American employers…but for Blue Man?  Looks like it’s just The Man now—more concerned with making money than respecting its employees’ rights.

 
< Prev   Next >

What is the NLRB?

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is a federal agency responsible for protecting workers' rights to form unions and promoting collective bargaining.

 

»  More about the NLRB

About the Author

Erin Johansson Erin Johansson writes our Eye on the NLRB blog.  Erin has worked as a Senior Research Associate at American Rights at Work since 2004 and is the author of some of our reports.  

 

» Learn more about Erin.

Connect with Us

  del.icio.us  facebook  youtube

  technorati_32x32.png  twitter  flickr

ACT


Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 77824 bytes) in /usr/www/users/araw/modules/mod_mainmenu.php on line 276