The early-year slowdown at the box office brought an unpleasant surprise for workers at Alamo Drafthouse: nationwide layoffs. But unionized employees at three of the dine-in chains theaters in Colorado and New York pushed back.
This week, workers at the Alamo location in Sloans Lake, Colorado who are unionized with the Communication Workers of America Local 7777, authorized a strike in response to an unspecified number of layoffs across the chain’s 35 locations last month. They joined Alamo workers at the chain’s locations in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, who are unionized with United Auto Workers Local 2179, who filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the chain and Sony Pictures Entertainment, which acquired Alamo last year.
Josh Reitze, a member of CWA 7777 who has worked in the kitchen at the Sloans Alamo location since 2022, said that news of the layoffs came as a big shock to employees, who found out about them through media reports and the Alamo Drafthouse Reddit page before being notified by management.
“I’ve worked in theaters since 2013, and the sort of layoffs Alamo is doing are fairly unprecedented,” Reitze told TheWrap. “I’ve never seen these kind of across-the-board layoffs.”
Alamo declined to comment for this story, but individuals with knowledge of the company’s internal decisions said that the layoffs were done in response to anticipated box office slowdown in the first quarter of 2025. The usual boost in March ticket sales that was brought last year by films such as “Dune: Part Two” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” isn’t expected to be matched by upcoming early spring titles such as “Mickey 17” and Disney’s live-action “Snow White.”
The individuals also said that the decision to lay off workers was made by Alamo, not by Sony. But Reitze said he and other workers at Sloans Alamo were skeptical of this as management had previously reduced hours during slow box office periods rather than turn to layoffs.
“I can’t see it as anything other than bad one-size-fits-all, top-down decision making,” he said.
Reitze said that management informed the Sloans workers that layoffs would be determined by seniority and that those who were laid off would have the ability to reapply for their jobs when moviegoing business picked up again, a policy confirmed by Alamo insiders to be implemented throughout the chain.
The unionized staffers argued that by going the layoff route rather than just reducing hours — even to zero for some workers — Alamo is not only hurting the livelihoods of those laid off but also creating a more inflexible work environment for those that remain. Workers regularly trade shift hours with fellow employees who may not be called in during a slow week.
“During these slow periods I usually end up taking some time off after the really busy holiday period, and my hours end up going to some of the newer people so they can keep some income,” Reitze said.
He also pointed out that the Sloans Alamo workers have been told by management that they are one of the better performing locations in the chain when it comes to repertory film screenings. Alamo made screenings of classic films part of its brand, advertising films like “The Wedding Singer” and “Ghost” as part of Valentine’s Day weekend, as well as a retrospective of Eddie Murphy’s filmography.
“They’ve been running the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy and that has been doing very well at our location, but these layoffs don’t take the performance of those films into account,” he said.
On an action webpage, UAW 2179 and CWA 7777 are calling on Alamo patrons to write to the chain to protest the layoffs, and argue that they violate good faith bargaining practices as negotiators at the Sloans Lake location have been in bargaining agreement talks since last September.
“The company’s own data shows that the movie industry is recovering, with the 2025 box office expected to reach 80-90% of 2019’s pre-pandemic record levels,” CWA wrote. “Workers would rather take reduced hours than lose their jobs entirely, but management refuses to listen.”
Reitze said that CWA 7777 is awaiting a response from Alamo over the strike authorization and are keeping their next plans secret. For now, he wants Alamo Drafthouse loyalists to speak out to protect what he says has been “a community space for a lot of people.”
“People say it’s just a movie theater or it’s just a bar, but we have a lot of regulars that come and hang out at our location. It’s their local theater. They see the same servers who know their name, know their order, know what they like. We want to keep that going.”
