Actors Equity is gearing up for upcoming negotiations for a new Broadway contract with healthcare, improved scheduling and better sick coverage among the priorities.

The union held a rally in Times Square Wednesday, with Actors Equity president Brooke Shields taking the stage alongside Equity executive director Al Vincent Jr, AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler and several other union leaders, in front of a rain-soaked crowd of various union members. Contract negotiations with the Broadway League, the trade association of producers and general managers, are scheduled to begin Monday. Those people who make these shows come to life eight times a week, theyre busting their ass for you. They really are, Shields said at the rally of the unions actors and stage managers.

Every working person deserves a fair deal at work. We need reasonable schedules, protection when we get hurt, Shields said, adding that she had torn her meniscus and still danced on it for three months. Our stage managers dont have swings. They get sick, they have to still come to work. Its too much. We need safer staffing practices. We need fair share money going into our health insurance.

On the healthcare front, employers already contribute into a healthcare fund, but Vincent told The Hollywood Reporter the goal is to make sure those contributions are secure going forward as costs rise.

A few speakers also raised the point of Broadway grosses increasing, with the industry hitting a record $1.9 billion in the 2024-2025 season, while the work has become harder, more dangerous, and the schedules have only grown more intense, said Jacqueline Jarrold, one of the co-chairs of the Equity production contract committee and negotiating team.

The negotiations will be focused on the production contract, which encompasses Broadway and extended-run or sit-down productions at theaters across the country.

Negotiations on the prior three-year contract, which expires in late September, lasted several months. As part of the contract, Equity saw salary increases, better paid sick leave benefits, a decrease in weekly rehearsal hours after a show opens and one additional personal day off for everyone, among other provisions. However, Equity leaders acknowledged that the contract fell short of all the goals members had wanted to achieve, and members continued to voice concerns about the demands placed on swings, or actors who understudy several ensemble roles, among other issues.

Asked about the discontent over the past agreement, and whether theyd be able to hit the goals this time, Vincent, who is the lead negotiator on the contract, said they would fight together for a better contract.

This is really hard work, and our members have a passion for the work they do, which is amazing. They also put really a lot of work in, and so they deserve everything that they want, and were going to fight for those things together. Well see what we can do, Vincent told THR after the rally.

This is the first production contract negotiation under Shields term, which began in May 2024. The goal is to get a multi-year agreement on the next production contract, but the exact length is yet to be determined.

The rally came as part of AFL-CIOs the largest federation of unions in the U.S., which includes Equity national bus tour to rally workers in the two months leading up to Labor Day. On Thursday, several union leaders, including Shuler, spoke to the idea of attacks, on workers across the country.

Speaking after the rally, Shuler pointed to the mass layoffs of government workers, as well as the struggles among many workers, including the rising cost of living, healthcare costs, retirement insecurity and more.

First line of attack was in the federal sector, where federal workers had their collective bargaining rights ripped away from them with the stroke of a pen by this administration, and so their union contract was eliminated overnight, and its the largest attack on unions in our history,Shuler told The Hollywood Reporter. We think about it in terms of what that means for the rest of the labor movement and union contracts writ large, because employers are emboldened. If you can take away rights like that arbitrarily, then everybody else is under threat.