The strike that has kept Broadway dark for 19 days must seem especially odd to the British actors who are here to perform in Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” and Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer.” London’s commercial theaters haven’t been shut down for a strike since the 1960s, when a strike by Actors Equity lasted only a few days.

What’s different in London? At least some stagehands there have more job security: As the assistant general secretary of the Broadcasting Entertainment Cinematograph and Theatre Union (the British stagehands’ union), Willy Donaghy, explained, each West End theater is required to permanently employ at least four stagehands. They then hire additional stagehands for the load-in and run of a show.

The two major issues behind the Broadway stagehands’ strike are whether producers should have greater flexibility in hiring stagehands to load in a show — under current rules, producers determine ahead of time how many people they will need and then have to hire them for the duration of load-in — and whether producers can ask stagehands to do work not specifically related to running the performance (like sweeping the stage) during their three-hour performance call. London producers have more flexibility in both of those areas. On the other hand, once a Broadway show closes, all the stagehands working on it are immediately unemployed.

The British Musicians Union has not resorted to a strike in recent decades, either. In 2003, a strike over how many musicians Broadway’s 13 largest theaters would have to hire kept theaters dark for four days. At the time, the theaters were required to hire between 24 and 26 players, whether or not they needed them. Producers wanted to eliminate these minimums, while musicians worried that this was just a step on the way to eliminating live music entirely. Ultimately the minimums were lowered to 18 or 19.

According to the general secretary of the Musicians Union in Britain, John Smith, West End theaters do not have any such minimums. However, the Musicians Union has used the threat of strike against producers and theater owners who have sought to replace them with “virtual orchestra” devices. After the most recent conflict, the musicians reached an accommodation with the Society of London Theatre (the organization of producers and theater owners and managers) limiting the use of these devices.

A spokesman for Local One, the Broadway stagehands’ union, Bruce Cohen, noted that the British unions and their employers also don’t have to negotiate about health care, since Britain has national health care.