Union Pickets to Show Up at Arena’s Debut : Protest: Stagehands local is disgruntled because the Anaheim venue is using non-union labor at its grand opening next week, a Barry Manilow concert.

While Barry Manilow croons “Mandy” next Saturday night at the grand opening of the Anaheim Arena, there’ll be a chorus outside singing the blues.

The local stagehands union says it will picket because the arena’s management has hired non-union stagehands. That’s ominous for members of small union local 217: The arena will be Orange County’s first performing venue of any size to use non-union stagehands.

The arena says it subcontracted with a non-union outside company because doing so is 20% cheaper and there are fewer time-consuming work rules to bother with.

“It wasn’t a union versus non-union thing,” said Brad Mayne, general manager of the Anaheim Arena. “The subcontractor costs a lot less--and with nowhere near as rigid work rules.”

Said Mike Mount, a union officer: “That’s ridiculous. If they’d had both of us competing for a contract, they’d have got a better labor rate.

“But they never even talked to us.”

The union represents stagehands at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, rival Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, Disneyland and the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Stagehands often work only a few days a week, but right now work is even slower. With the economy still in a slump, fewer rock bands are on the road. Also, fewer corporate meetings are scheduled, meaning less demand for the audio-visual specialists the union provides.

The Pacific Amphitheatre won’t put on rock concerts after this year because of noise complaints, and that means even less work for union members. The Anaheim Arena, though, has scheduled more than 20 concerts in the next year, employing between 30 and 50 stagehands for each.

Ogden Corp., which will run the stadium for the city of Anaheim, signed a five-year contract in the spring with L.A. Stagecall of Redondo Beach. Stagecall will provide labor for events like the Manilow show, which requires 25 stagehands to unload pianos, guitars and lights, set them all up, run spotlights during the show and load the equipment back onto the trucks when the show is over.

For that, L.A. Stagecall gets nearly $19 an hour per hand from Ogden; it pays wages of $12.50 an hour.

Union hands are paid $17.50 to $20 an hour, plus benefits like health insurance that can add another couple of dollars an hour. But, the union says, it would have underbid Stagecall had it been asked, so desperate is it to keep the big venues.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees local says it hopes to turn out at least several hundred of its own people and members of other unions for picketing, which will begin Thursday night and go through much of Friday, when the arena will open at 8 a.m. for public tours.

The Manilow concert, the second in a tour that starts Thursday in San Diego, begins at 8 p.m. next Saturday. Manilow’s press agent said Friday that the singer was in rehearsal and that she didn’t know if he was aware that the concert will be picketed.

The arena is also home to Walt Disney Co.’s new Mighty Ducks hockey franchise, and Disney has started calling the arena The Pond at Anaheim. Bill Fogarty of the AFL-CIO Central Labor Council says the pickets are considering signs that say “There’s Scum on the Pond.”

The flap puts Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly, who was elected in November with strong union support, in an uncomfortable position.

The union says Daly should fight to keep the arena jobs in Orange County rather than contract with a Los Angeles company. But Ogden’s contract with the city allows it to hire whomever it wants.

“I’m sympathetic,” Daly said, “but it’s a privately operated facility, and that’s the way it was planned. The city has to abide by the agreement.”

Daly said he won’t take a position until speaking with Ogden Corp. next week. Will he cross the picket line for the grand opening?

“I’ll have to discuss that with my friends in the labor movement first,” he said.

Ogden Corp., a Fortune 500 company based in New York, is not a totally non-union employer: It has contracts with the stagehands union at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood and at other venues that it runs.

L.A. Stagecall is a 7-year-old company that provides stagehands at Long Beach’s arena and provides security, stage management, carpentry and other services.

One of those performers is Barry Manilow. The company said that, while the singer was practicing in a Santa Monica aircraft hangar for his tour, Stagecall workers were setting up the lighting.