A strike by workers of the Sierra Club, the prominent environmental organization founded in California, was narrowly averted Tuesday after an overnight 18-hour-long marathon bargaining session.

As part of a deal reached between the Sierra Club and the Progressive Workers Union, which represents workers employed by the organization’s national chapter, 12 workers, including several union leaders, will be reinstated — out of some 70 workers who were recently laid off.

In exchange, the union agreed to forgo a 7% raise for workers the organization had previously agreed to in negotiations. It also agreed to withdraw several unfair labor practice charges it had filed with the National Labor Relations Board alleging the organization had deliberately delayed bargaining and retaliated against union leaders.

The deal was struck mere hours before picket lines were scheduled to be held at 8 a.m. Tuesday at the organization’s offices in Los Angeles, Oakland and Washington, D.C. The deal appears to have, at least for the moment, put to rest internal turmoil at the environmental group over allegations of retaliatory layoffs and financial mismanagement.

Walter Keady, newly elected president of the Progressive Workers Union, said in a statement that the vote to strike “showed that Sierra Club’s unions are committed to protecting one another in the face of financial trouble at the organization.”

“No deal is perfect, but we are excited that this agreement meets our strike platform and avoids unnecessary harm to the Sierra Club community that could have occurred during a strike,” Keady said.

The Sierra Club agreed that if fundraising stays on track, it will not carry out additional layoffs for at least the next 10 months. Those who will not get their jobs back will receive additional severance and layoff benefits under the agreement.

The deal also settles issues raised in contract talks that have dragged on for the last several months. It covers issues related to overtime hours, pay raises for added job responsibilities, and use of generative AI, among others.

Final negotiations are scheduled over the next week, and a contract agreement is expected to be ratified by the end of the month.

Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous announced the deal in an email to Sierra Club staff midday on Tuesday.

In the email, he thanked the union’s leadership “for their commitment and willingness to work together to reach an agreement” and he emphasized the organization’s “mission critical work” to protect clean air and water.

“We all share a deep love and commitment to the Sierra Club and the dedicated staff and volunteers who are the lifeblood of our organization,” Jealous wrote.

The storied Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, which was long considered one of the region’s top classical music venues, is for sale after being owned by a local church for the last two decades.

Harvest Rock Church is asking $45 million for the 1,200-seat auditorium near the Old Pasadena district that has also hosted jazz greats including Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie. It has been called “the Carnegie Hall of the West” by fans.

The evangelical Christian Harvest Rock Church is based on the property and uses the auditorium for services. It also rents the venue to the Pasadena Symphony and the Colburn Orchestra as well as other performers that the church finds compatible with its religious mission.

The church recently paid off its mortgage on the property, Pastor Che Ahn said, and decided to sell it to make a move to a bigger facility somewhere in the Los Angeles region.

“We’re hoping that someone will buy it to really restore it to the original purpose and intent of that building,” he said.

The Ambassador Auditorium was intended to be a showplace for live performances when it opened in 1974. The Times called it “A new Taj Mahal for the arts.”

It was also the centerpiece for Ambassador College, operated by the Worldwide Church of God on a 40-acre campus near the intersection of Colorado and Orange Grove boulevards that has been largely redeveloped in recent years.

Harvest Rock Church and Maranatha High School bought a 13-acre portion of the campus site with five buildings including the auditorium from Worldwide Church of God in 2004 for an undisclosed amount. The auditorium controlled by Harvest Rock Church is assessed at $13.5 million, public records show.

Ambassador College founder Herbert W. Armstrong was a televangelist who set out to call attention to his ministry by building a lavish auditorium where he could broadcast services and host high-profile nonreligious events, including an opening performance by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on April 7, 1974.

The auditorium made a big impression on local music aficionados, said Donna Perlmutter, who was a music critic at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner newspaper when it debuted.

“We were, at the time, bowled over by the presence of it,” she said. “It was to compare with any marvelous auditorium in Europe.”

That it had been created by a bombastic radio and television evangelist known for making dark end-times prophesies seemed unusual, she said.

“It was almost comical to think of who it was who erected this magnificent place,” Perlmutter said of Armstrong. “It was such a weird juxtaposition.”

Jazz greats who have performed in the 1,200-seat Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena include Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck and Dizzy Gillespie.

(Ambassador Foundation of Pasadena)

The acoustics are “optimal,” she said. “It bears a bright, undistorted sound. No singer could want more.”

The hall’s design by the architectural firm Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall (DMJM) strived for a mid-century version of glamour, with a main lobby chandelier composed of 100 custom bulbs and 1,390 crystals in three tiers of polished bronze.

Finishes include walls of Brazilian rosewood and rose onyx, African shedua wood railings and ceilings adorned with hand-rolled 24-carat gold leaf.

The auditorium is set in a 500,000-gallon water pond that holds a 37-foot solid bronze egret sculpture designed by British sculptor David Wynne, who also famously made a bronze sculpture of the Beatles’ busts in 1964 and is said to have introduced them to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Potential buyers of the auditorium include the city of Pasadena, private investors, or a group of investors seeking “to acquire a landmark with profound historical significance,” said real estate agent Isidora Fridman of Compass, who has the listing with Lauren Rauschenberg. The property at 131 S. St. John Ave. will officially go on the market July 9, Compass said.

The Hollywood Teamsters’ float at L.A. Pride was upholstered with sparkly blue fabric provided by a location manager who has worked on Peacock’s “Bel-Air” and Netflix’s “The Politician.”

The giant bubble letters were layered by a construction coordinator on Freeform’s “Good Trouble.” The horse heads were turned to gold by painters whose resumes include “Jerry Maguire” and “The Big Lebowski.” The rainbow jewels came directly from the set of Lionsgate’s upcoming Michael Jackson biopic.

Roughly one month after the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE, the largest union representing Hollywood crew members, entered general contract negotiations with the major studios, a smaller coalition of below-the-line workers is stepping into the spotlight. And dozens of them took to the streets of Hollywood over the weekend to build LGBTQ+ and crew member solidarity ahead of their next round of bargaining.

“As far as you can see, there are people here who support equality, and that’s why we’re here,” said Chris Fuentes, a location manager and president of the Teamsters LGBTQ+ caucus. “In the end, it’s about equality and respect. We have to respect these workers and pay them what they’re worth.”

Teamsters Local 399 is part of the Hollywood Basic Crafts, which is scheduled to begin main contract talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Monday.

Union members are seeking wage increases, pension and health benefits, higher streaming residuals and protections against artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles for some 7,600 crew members — including animal trainers, casting directors, drivers, location managers, mechanics, cement masons and plumbers — employed on film and TV sets.

In addition to Teamsters Local 399, the union side (known collectively as the Hollywood Basic Crafts) consists of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 40, Laborers International Union of North America Local 724, United Assn. Plumbers Local 78 and the Operating Plasterers and Cement Masons International Assn. Local 755.

The studio side represents Amazon MGM, Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros. Discovery and other companies. The AMPTP declined to comment for this story.

In early March, Teamsters Local 399 and the Hollywood Basic Crafts joined forces with IATSE to negotiate updates to their shared pension and health plan jointly for the first time in 36 years. Efforts to reach an agreement on that package are ongoing; pension and health benefits remain a sticking point in IATSE negotiations.

Now, the Hollywood Teamsters and Basic Crafts are back to bargain simultaneously for six contracts covering different groupings of crew members. The current below-the-line agreements are set to expire July 31.

The pressure to secure substantial financial gains is high in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hollywood strikes of 2023 and an ongoing industry contraction — all of which have reduced employment opportunities for entertainment workers in recent years. According to Lindsay Dougherty, principal officer and chief negotiator of Teamsters Local 399, wage increases are a priority for the union even more than in past contract negotiations, “coming off of years of financial distress.”

“When I first got into this business 22 years ago, you could be a location manager, and your significant other could stay home. It was that good of a job,” said Jason McCauley, a location manager whose credits include HBO’s “Westworld” and Warner Bros.’ “Joker: Folie à Deux.” “These days, I can barely pay our bills working 60 hours a week or more.”

Safety and the hazards of working marathon shifts that can last 20-plus hours are also issues the unions are hoping to address, mainly by setting compensation standards that would deter employers from requiring crews to work overtime.

“If there are productions out there that are working our members with excessive hours … they should know that they’re going to have to pay to play,” Dougherty said. “They will not film as many hours if they know it’s going to cost them more money.”

Fears of another Hollywood walkout have softened somewhat as IATSE negotiations have transpired largely without incident. Dougherty joked that in a perfect world, the AMPTP would agree to all of the Hollywood Teamsters and Basic Crafts proposals, yielding a resolution Monday.

But the unions are prepared to bargain down to the wire if necessary.

“We went on strike one time in our history with these companies, and that was in 1988, so it’s possible to … bargain without having to strike,” Dougherty said. “It’s gonna take as long as it needs to.”