The Bunny Years (40 page)

A
master pact covering all Club employees had been signed between Playboy and the Hotel and Restaurant Employees & Bartenders International Union, but the New York Bunnies soon deemed the Dining Room Employees Local 1 a “sweetheart union” and demanded the right to join a union of their choice. Marcia Donen and Nancy Phillips represented the Bunnies in union contract negotiations and, when talks broke down, the women staged a walkout on Saturday, February 4, 1967.
New York Post
columnist Earl Wilson quoted one Bunny as saying, “I'd rather be a Teamster.”

On Sunday, February 5, the 42 striking Bunnies received a Western Union telegram stating:
Your failure to work as scheduled or notified was in violation of the collective bargaining agreement and gross violation of your obligation to your employer. You are therefore discharged effective immediately.
[signed]
Alan Spiers, General Manager, New York Playboy Club.

Striking New York Bunnies.

The walkout on that busy Saturday night did not go unnoticed. On the following Monday, Earl Wilson visited the Bunnies on the picket line and noted, “It was by far the prettiest picket line in New York history, and caused many men to take a new interest in labor relations.”

He also reported management's admission that at a salary of $1.45 an hour, a Bunny's basic pay for a 40-hour week was $68, not counting tips. At issue was the fact that on the previous Wednesday, the Club had eliminated signed tipping and substituted a 15 percent service charge. In return, Bunnies would no longer have to pay $10 a night in bar fees to be shared by untipped colleagues such as service bartenders and busboys; that would subsequently be a percentage of the service charge. The economic reality was immediately apparent to every Bunny; the cash tip would soon be history.

One important benefit of the walkout was that Bunnies were able to reveal, through the press, the effect of the Club's new tipping policy on their incomes. Bunnies would not be getting any of the 15 percent service charge on the first $70 worth of drinks they served and only a portion of the service charge thereafter. And, after all, tips were the reason everyone donned the tail and ears.

In response, Playboy management flew in 30 reserve Bunnies from Clubs in Boston, Baltimore and Atlanta who raced to get fingerprinted for their Cabaret licenses so they could cross the picket line. Tony Bennett, singing at the Copacabana around the corner, telephoned his regrets that he would not be visiting the Playboy Club; he refused to cross the picket line.

Richard Leahy reported in the
New York World Journal Tribune
on Wednesday, February 8, that “those 42 poor Playboy Club Bunnies who got kicked out of their hutch for picketing are due back today in their little rabbit costumes.” An arctic blizzard had shut down New York City, including the Playboy Club, the night before, but the striking Bunnies had nevertheless met at the Waldorf-Astoria to discuss a truce with management while the National Labor Relations Board studied the situation.

That same Wednesday, “Shop Steward” Marcia Donen received another telegram from Western Union:
Several girls have contacted the New York Playboy Club with the hope of being rehired as Bunnies. In order to be fair to all of those involved in the current difficulty, a meeting will be held with top Playboy Club executive Arnold Morton at the Club on Thursday afternoon February 9 at 3 p.m. All those interested should attend.
[signed]
Hugh M. Hefner, President, Playboy Clubs International.

M
ARCIA
D
ONEN
R
OMA

I
became involved in labor relations when I got tired of seeing girls learn they'd been fired by not finding their names on the weekly schedule that was posted every Saturday night in the Bunny dressing room. The girls would cry their eyes out. Individually, they didn't have the means to fight for their jobs, and yet nobody was joining together to do anything about it. It was a matter of principle with me, and I felt that we ought to be represented by a union that would protect us.

“Management had brought in Local 1 of the AFL-CIO, but girls were still being left off the schedule for not having the so-called ‘Bunny Image.' Another Bunny, Nancy Phillips, and I started talking about how we could change things, and soon the other girls elected us to represent them. We took our existing contract to the National Labor Relations Board and discovered that, up to a certain date, we had the option of bringing in another local. We went to the Teamsters. When Playboy balked, the Bunnies decided to go out on strike, and the Teamsters helped us organize the walkout. “We set the strike for a Saturday night because we knew that would really hurt business. A lot of the customers supported us and didn't cross the picket lines. It was bitterly cold. L'Etoile, the restaurant next door, gave us hot onion soup. Bunnies were brought in from other Clubs, although none of the New York Bunnies really let us down. For a couple of the girls, the job was their life and they didn't go out on strike because they were afraid of retaliation. That was sad. Otherwise, the girls were all fabulously supportive.

“After the strike was settled, the other Bunnies gave Nancy and me engraved peace-sign pendants and cards with all their signatures. In fact, we went on to help negotiate the union contracts for the entire Playboy chain. I continued to work as a Bunny for 10 years. Finally, the New York Club closed for renovations in 1974, and everyone was laid off. But at least I didn't find out about it by seeing my name missing from a work schedule tacked to the wall!”

New York real-estate agent Marcia Donen Roma near her Upper East Side office at Fox Residential.

Ironically, Donen ended up on management's side. Several years after she left the New York Club, mutual friends reintroduced the former Bunny to her former boss,
restaurateur Tony Roma, who had managed the New York Club for a while before establishing his chain of rib restaurants. Years earlier, Roma had spotted Marcia as a teenager eating ice cream at the Flick Ice Cream Parlor with a friend. He had handed them both business cards, telling them that they should audition for Bunny jobs. Donen ultimately took his advice. After becoming reacquainted in the late 1970s, Donen and Roma married. Now divorced, Marcia is raising their daughter Sarina and working as a Manhattan real-estate agent

L
ISA
A
ROMI

A
lot of the Bunnies had been talking about going on strike, but I didn't know they had actually decided to do it. I hadn't been working for a few days, and when my cab pulled up at the corner that Saturday, I saw the picket line. Some of the girls didn't think that I would join the strike because it could jeopardize my livelihood, and I had a child to support. I said, of course I would join, that this work stoppage was for the benefit of all of us—for women in general and even my daughter's future. After all, it was because of my daughter that I took the job in the first place.