Unionized teachers at the Second City Training Center in Old Town have reached a tentative deal with the comedy company, halting a strike planned for next week and ending a two-year dispute for a labor contract.
After an 11-hour bargaining session Friday that resulted in the tentative contract agreement, the strike planned for Tuesday has been officially suspended, according to a social media post Saturday by the Association of International Comedy Educators (AICE), part of the Illinois Federation of Teachers.
“We appreciate [Second City] leadership returning to the table, and seeing this through. And it would not have happened without the support of our allies!” AICE said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The contract still needs to be voted on by the union, and terms of the deal were not publicly available.
Instructors, musical directors and corporate facilitators have been negotiating a contract with representatives of Second City’s current owner, ZMC, a New York City-based private equity investment firm, for some two years. A representative for ZMC could not be immediately reached for comment.
Second City’s actors and stage managers are separately represented by the Actors’ Equity union.