Fed Up With Carbon Monoxide and Drunks, Casa Bonita’s Performers Are Unionizing
The documentary may be finished, but the story of Casa Bonita is far from over.
Just weeks after the release of ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, the acclaimed film chronicling the highs and lows of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s extensive (and expensive) renovation of the iconic Colorado eatery, some major news concerning the future of Casa Bonita dropped.
The restaurant’s in-house performers, including cliff divers, puppeteers, actors and magicians, are moving to unionize with IATSE and Actors’ Equity Association. According to a union press release, employees are simply looking for “fair pay” as well as “benefits” and “clearer communication between workers and management.” All of which sounds pretty reasonable.
Don't Miss
They also have concerns about “insufficient training” and “abusive patrons emboldened by alcohol.” And really, who amongst us would want to perform a children’s puppet show for crowd of rowdy South Park fans who have been day-drinking frozen margaritas in a fake Mexican village for who knows how long? Even the documentary paused to illustrate just how annoying drunk tourists can be.
Paramount
Paramount
This isn’t the first time that Casa Bonita’s staff have made their displeasure concerning working conditions known. Last year a controversial no-tipping policy was one of several factors that inspired a group of employees to issue a list of demands to management — a development that was conspicuously omitted from the documentary.
It remains to be seen how Parker and Stone will react to this news, considering that the pair haven’t always been the most pro-union, famously lampooning the 2007 writers’ strike in the South Park episode “Canada on Strike” (Parker and Stone themselves aren’t part of the union), later calling it a “docudrama.”
To be fair, they were slightly more supportive of a potential strike in 2017. And the 2018 episode “Unfulfilled” found striking Amazon workers being replaced with mutant scabs.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Casa Bonita’s performers “asked for, but did not receive, voluntary recognition (from Casa Bonita management) and are now filing with the National Labor Relations Board for an election.” Their efforts follow in the footsteps of other newly-unionized live entertainers, including the Disneyland character actors. And if you don’t think that labor movements are important, we have two words for you: “communal underwear.”
The Hollywood Reporter also noted that Casa Bonita’s dive team specifically became interested in unionizing due to “incidents involving unsafe carbon monoxide levels in a holding room,” which were only addressed after the divers “refused to work in those conditions.”
That’s an especially bad look for the restaurant considering that the central narrative of the recent documentary is that the new owners fixed the formerly hazardous working conditions, which included a giant electrical panel placed directly next to the area where divers exited the pool. Parker and Stone’s contractor called it “the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life.” But trading possible electrocution for possible carbon monoxide poisoning doesn’t exactly seem like a win for those workers.
The performers also penned a letter to Parker and Stone, using the duo’s own comparisons between Casa Bonita and Broadway, captured in the documentary, as further proof that the Casa Bonita entertainers deserve similar protections. “We believe the unions that have organized Broadway’s workers onstage and off can help ensure we’re able to continue delivering world-class entertainment here for years to come,” the letter reads.
If there’s ever a sequel to ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!, hopefully this stuff doesn’t get ignored.
You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this).
