Almost two years since the workers of the Brooklyn Museum voted to unionize and began to negotiate a new contract, management made its “final offer”. Employees say it’s not good.
On Wednesday, the museum offered workers a minimum raise of five percent for the rest of 2023, then three percent more each year through 2027, plus bonuses. He gives the bargaining unit a June 30 deadline to approve the contract.
But the union says the proposal falls far short of its demands.
“The union’s bargaining committee is not going to recommend the offer to the members,” said Maida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers (UAW), told Artnet News. “It locks us into a long contract with much lower increases in the following years. It leaves out the part-time museum educators the museum relies on to carry out all of its community and school programs, and offers them the lowest raises.
The issue is all the more pressing as members of the bargaining unit say they have not received raises since July 2021. Museum management, on the other hand, gave themselves raises in July 2022, as part of the introduction of a new salary classification system.
“Yesterday was one of those ‘I have to do everything’ days at the office, and it was emotionally very difficult given the Brooklyn Museum’s very late and distressing ‘final offer’,” the curator wrote. Carmen Hermo in an Instagram story.
The union, which has around 130 members, had called for a general wage increase of 16.25% over the next three and a half years.
The museum said its new compensation plan will give some workers raises well above that amount. “[S]Some employees would receive a raise of over 5% (up to over 25%) depending on their salary level,” a spokesperson for the museum told Artnet News in an email. “Part-time educators have a wide range of hourly rates.”
“It is true that they are implementing a new rank system with higher minimum rates which will result in additional increases for some unit members, but on the one hand they are long overdue,” replied Rothstein. “And if you’re raising someone who makes $47,000 to $56,000 a year, that’s a big percentage, but it’s still a low rate of pay for a full-time professional.”
Managerial positions are grades A to D, while members of the bargaining unit are grades E to J. The union said the museum offers minimum wages for workers in grades E to J ranging from 56 $000 to $98,000. The museum claimed the numbers were higher than that, but declined to disclose the salaries awarded to any of the ranks.
“The museum is strongly committed to raising salaries across the board and creating more pay equity and transparency. We have raised salaries at all levels, especially for positions that are traditionally the lowest paid in the field,” the museum spokesperson said. “For fiscal year 2023, our salaries and benefits represent two-thirds of our operating budget, and the industry standard for museums our size is 50%, according to the AAMD Salary Survey 2022.”
The Brooklyn Museum’s bargaining committee says the institution’s current offer is not competitive with recent deals reached by their recently unionized peers. The Hispanic Society raised wages by more than 18% in May after staff went on strikewhile in March the Whitney Museum raised salaries by 15%plus an additional 9.5% each year through 2026.
“Brooklyn Museum salaries have lagged everyone else for years, even in the low-wage museum industry,” Rosenstein said, saying that will continue under the current contract offer in due to low increases of 3% over the duration of the contract. following years, from 2024 to ’27.
The Whitney’s minimum wages for unionized staff, at $52,000 to $100,000, aren’t far off what the Brooklyn Museum was supposed to offer, according to Rosenstein, who noted, however, that the Whitney union includes more entry-level employees. .
The Brooklyn Museum union had originally called for the increases in the new contract to be retroactive to July 2022, when the rest of the museum’s staff saw their salaries rise. As a compromise, he suggested one-time bonuses of $4,000 for full-timers and $2,000 for part-timers. The current offer is less than half of that, with $2,000 for full-time and $500 for part-time.
“The museum is threatening to take the bonus off the table if we don’t accept the contract by the deadline,” Rosenstein said. “They took a very anti-union approach. They weaponized the final offer, attempting to force workers into a deal rather than coming to the table and negotiating.
Staff@bkmuseumunionpicket for a fair union contract@brooklynmuseumannual #artistsball @BAM_union @BFSUnion @MoMA_Local2110 @GMU_2110 @UAW @CentralLaborNYC @AFLCIO pic.twitter.com/Sup18sWg5f
— @2110UAW (@Local2110UAW) April 26, 2023
The Brooklyn Museum’s curators, curators, event organizers, educators and frontline workers first organized in August 2021. (The institution’s security, operations, maintenance and administrative staff separately part of AFSCME District Council 37 Local 1502.)
The Brooklyn Museum says “financial issues are driving the bid,” Rosenstein said. “But they’re not really negotiating in good faith.”
She cited as examples the museum’s initial insistence on Zoom negotiations – despite requiring staff to show up on site for work – as well as disputes over about 15 employees whom the museum classified as executives but that the union feels they should be part of the bargaining unit. (The union has also filed numerous complaints against the museum with the National Labor Relations Board, one of which is currently pending.)
Solidarity with @bkmuseumunion! pic.twitter.com/iV6SACEBSZ
— patrick tyrrell (@patrickctyrrell) April 25, 2023
As negotiations with management dragged on, unionized workers took twice for demonstration in front of the museum at high-profile events, targeting the opening gala of fashion designer Thierry Mugler’s flagship exhibition last fall, as well as the Brooklyn Artists Ball in April. This latest event reportedly raised $2.8 million in funds for the institution.
“The whole negotiation process was very frustrating. The museum likes to cover themselves in social justice, but I think they really don’t like unions,” Rosenstein said. “People who are in the unit love the museum and want to stay there. They feel what they are doing is really important, but they feel so disrespected.
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