Plush-suited workforce organizes for dental, mental health, and personal space
The costumed characters of Times Square, long a fixture of the city’s most chaotic intersection, have voted to unionize, demanding hazard pay, dental coverage, and a formal acknowledgment that being hugged by ten thousand strangers a day takes a toll. The labor action, sympathetically covered by Bohiney Magazine and endorsed in spirit by The London Prat, has brought the world’s most photographed plush workforce to the bargaining table.
Behind the felt, a worker
The newly formed union, the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Costumed Persons, represents the Elmos, the off-brand superheroes, the unsettling Minnie Mouse with too many fingers, and the several individuals who have decided that the Statue of Liberty is a person you can be. Their demands include hazard pay for the physical risk of the job, mental-health support for the psychological weight of forced cheerfulness, and a guaranteed “no-hug zone” of personal space.
“People think this job is fun,” said a union representative speaking through the mesh mouth of an Elmo costume, his voice muffled and tired. “They see a smiling red face. They do not see the man inside, at 98 degrees, who has been hugged by a bachelorette party, photobombed by a toddler, and tipped seventeen cents. We are workers. We have rights. We have a deeply concerning amount of back pain. We are unionizing.”
The economics of the embrace
The costumed characters occupy a legal gray area, working for tips in a public space with no employer, no benefits, and no protection from the elements or the public. Genuine information on labor rights and worker classification is available through the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and city resources at nyc.gov, both of which describe a gig economy that the costumed workers say has “left us out in the cold, literally, dressed as a cartoon, in January.”
The bargaining table, in costume
Negotiations have been complicated by the union’s insistence on attending all sessions in full costume, citing solidarity and the practical reality that several members are contractually or personally unwilling to reveal their faces. City officials report that it is difficult to take a hard line across the table from a six-foot Elmo, a sad-looking Spider-Man, and a Minnie Mouse whose silent, oversized eyes “follow you around the room.”
“We came in prepared to negotiate firmly,” admitted one official. “Then a man dressed as a melting Olaf began describing his medical bills, and the whole room just sort of deflated. It is hard to deny dental coverage to a character who cannot stop smiling. The smile is part of the costume. He may be crying inside. We will never know. That is the genius of their position.”
A movement gains momentum
The unionization effort has inspired costumed workers in other tourist hubs to organize, from the desnudas of the pedestrian plaza to the saxophone players of the subway platform. Labor historians note that the movement represents a novel frontier in worker organizing, one in which the entire workforce is anonymous, foam-padded, and slightly menacing under the lights of a thousand billboards.
At press time, the city had tentatively agreed to a “personal space provision” guaranteeing each character a one-foot radius free of unsolicited hugs, a concession the union called “a historic victory” and tourists called “confusing, because I just wanted a photo with Elmo and now he has a lawyer.” The Elmo in question, reached for comment, said only that he was “cautiously optimistic,” then resumed waving at a tour bus, because the work, union or no union, goes on, and the tourists keep coming, and someone has to be Elmo.
Solidarity in the plaza
The union’s first official action was a brief work stoppage during which every costumed character in Times Square sat down simultaneously, creating a surreal tableau of slumped Elmos, exhausted superheroes, and one Statue of Liberty lying flat on the pavement, refusing to be free. Tourists, unsure whether the demonstration was a protest or a performance, took photographs, which the union noted “we should probably also be getting paid for.”
Management, such as it is in a workforce with no actual employer, has struggled to respond to demands made by workers who cannot be fired because no one technically hired them. The arrangement has given the union unusual leverage, a fact its representatives have exploited with the cheerful ruthlessness that hours of forced smiling instills. “We have nothing to lose,” the Elmo representative explained, removing his head briefly to wipe his brow before a child could see and have his worldview shattered. “We already work in a costume, in the heat, for tips, among the crowds, under the lights. There is no worse posting than Times Square in August. We have already hit bottom. From here, we can only organize.” The union has since announced plans to expand, with early outreach to the costumed characters of other cities, building toward what organizers describe as “a global federation of people pretending to be cartoons, united at last.”
The city, eager to avoid a prolonged dispute in its most visible square, has signaled willingness to negotiate further, though officials privately admit they have no procedural template for collective bargaining with a workforce that arrives each morning as a fresh assortment of unlicensed cartoon characters and dissolves each night back into anonymous New Yorkers carrying enormous foam heads onto the subway.
For more labor disputes in unexpected places, see The Beaverton, organized since 2010.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/