To The Second City Upper Management:

We, the teachers, music directors, and facilitators of The Second City Hollywood, write with exhaustion and bafflement at the way you continue to aggressively neglect us and our supporters.

Your celebratory announcement of the new Brooklyn location on October 6 was not only discourteous towards our Union members in all cities who are still fighting for fair wages, but disrespectful to SC Hollywood students and faculty who are waiting for the new building you promised us. Your announcement bore no mention of the timeline for a Hollywood home, nor a justification or acknowledgement that this New York endeavor (complete with restaurant and bar!) has leap-frogged we Angelenos already in the queue.

This slap-in-the-face appetizer was followed up by a more insulting main course than we could have ever imagined: the unilateral and unexplained removal of Hollywood from your website on or around October 9. The location that you so dismissively referred to as a “virtual only” school has been reduced to no school at all, according to your primary public interface. Not only that, we faculty were completely expunged. In light of the way our bargaining team has been treated at the table, such a drastic move comes across as rude and hostile. On a more practical level, it also left us wondering if we had all been fired. If so, why? If not, why this callous and extreme action? Our Hollywood Managerial team appears to be just as shocked as we are. Was it done over a long weekend because you thought nobody would notice? Your vague email about website maintenance, sent several days after causing the mass panic, was insufficient.

The correlation of our Union certification and the permanent closure of our old building is not lost on us. We perceive it as a blatant attempt to silence those overwhelming voices that voted Yes, and as just one of many in a line of Union-bashing tactics you’ve employed to achieve decertification.

We ask that you acknowledge the harm you’ve chosen to cause by your reckless decision-making. We demand that you immediately provide an update to the entire Second City community on the status of your search for a new space in Los Angeles, and that you issue regular updates going forward. We insist upon 100% transparency in this regard. Lastly, we implore you to issue an immediate, unequivocal apology to our students who have been mistreated despite keeping your training center afloat financially.

We await your reply and action. Thank you for taking the time to read, understand, and do better.