Over the past two months, workers at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, a jewel-like institution in New York’s Washington Heights devoted to art from Spain, Portugal and the former colonies of Latin America,were on strike. It is the first strike of this magnitude at a New York museum in more than 20 years, since unionized workers at the Museum of Modern Art went off work in 2000 for 134 days.
Museum administrators “have everything to lose by continuing the strike. It makes no sense other than pure stubbornness and intransigence,” says Maida Rosenstein, director of organizing with United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110, which represents staff at the Hispanic Society and many other arts institutions. from the northeast. “It’s a very, very particular collection, with people who have incredible expertise in this area.” The museum was due to reopen in early April after a six-year renovation– that the reopening has now been postponed indefinitely.
In July 2021, workers at the Hispanic Society voted 15 to 1 to form a union, which has been bargaining since their first contract. However, a contentious situation then played out between the staff and the administration of the museum.
Massive support for the strike
In February 2023, employees sent an open letter to the museum’s board of trustees outlining staffing shortages they said made it difficult to properly care for and safeguard the collection, and raising concerns about recent administrative appointments. , among other problems. After minimal progress in negotiations, 78% of union members voted to authorize a strike.
In a statement, the administrators of the Hispanic Society say they remain “optimistic that an agreement will be reached in the near future, and we are committed to maintaining an open line of communication with our dedicated staff.” A spokesperson adds that the trustees’ most recent proposal “is highly competitive in the New York museum landscape, even against much wealthier cultural organizations.”
The strike at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library is now the longest at a New York art museum since a four-month strike at MoMA in 2020
Photo courtesy of UAW Local 2110
At the heart of the negotiations, wages and health. In one of the most recent offers the museum has made to unionized workers, staff would have to pay their own healthcare premiums and deductibles. Wages would rise but, according to unionists, not enough to cover additional health costs. Negotiations are at an impasse and the strike could become the longest at an American museum in more than a generation. It has already eclipsed the most publicized recent museum strike.
It dates back to last fall when the union representing 180 employees at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) – part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) – voted to authorize a strike. Two years after the creation of the PMA branch of the AFSCME, museum staff and administrators had still not managed to agree on their first contract, a process that usually takes around 15 months.
Negotiations at the PMA focused on wages, paid family leave and working conditions, but came amid several scandals and administrative reshuffles at the museum, which 13-year-old director Timothy Rub told the summer of 2021 that he would resign. There have also been allegations of sexual harassment and physical and verbal abuse against principals at the institution, which in 2021 completed a $232 million campus expansion and integration project designed by Frank Gehry. . Last summer, unionized workers at the museum filed eight unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing administrators of “repeated interference with employees’ rights.”
Deal
Rub’s successor, the former director of the National Gallery of Canada, Sasha Suda, took up her new position on the first day of the strike. The union’s efforts drew national attention, and the museum was criticized for hiring non-union employees to install a blockbuster Henri Matisse exhibit. On October 16, after 19 days of strike, union members ratified a two-year agreement which includes a 14% salary increase over the term of the contract, a reduction in health costs, four weeks of paternity leave and an increase in the minimum hourly wage at the museum to $16.75.
Shortly after the PMA workers ratified their first contract, staff at the Storm King Art Center in the Hudson River Valley have announced plans to form a union. The workers hoped that the administration of the popular sculpture park would voluntarily recognize the union, but this did not happen. On April 27, following an election to the National Labor Relations Council, the workers joined the Association of Civil Service Employees, affiliated to the AFSCME.
“I’m always thinking about the future of Storm King and their statement in support of inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility,” says Rebecca Lujan, Education Coordinator at the center and member of the organizing committee. “If it is our practice that we want a more inclusive space at Storm King, it has to be done internally with a union that is inclusive of all workers.”
National movement
The organizing efforts of Storm King, the PMA, the Hispanic Society and elsewhere reflect a trend that has grown in the American arts and heritage sector over the past five years and has accelerated with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Workers at more than 20 institutions have formed a union since 2020 or are actively negotiating for their first contract, including the Jewish Museum and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Mass Moca in the Massachusetts. . In March, after 16 months of negotiations, workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art, who had unionized in the spring of 2021, ratified their first contract.
The issues driving workers to form unions across the country and across a wide range of industrial sectors are remarkably consistent: wages, benefits and working conditions. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of employees who belonged to a union in 2022 was 14.3 million, an increase of 1.9% from 2021.
“It’s not at all surprising considering what it’s like to work in the non-profit museum sector”
“It’s a steady drop of museums across the country announcing their intention to organize, which is really exciting and not at all surprising considering what it’s like to work in the nonprofit museum sector. lucrative,” says Adam Rizzo, PMA educator and president of the museum’s AFSCME union.
The union movement in museums has coincided with a broader push to organize workplaces across the American economy, from Amazon and Starbucks to HarperCollins. University workers, increasingly subjected to the precarious employment conditions of the gig economy, are organizing en masse – from the University of California system to the New School of New York and Rutgers University from New Jersey. While, for the first time in 15 years, the 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America are on strike amid stalled negotiations with Hollywood movie studios.
Not a quick fix
“We were able to make some really big changes by going on strike and winning the contract that we ended up with, but there’s still a lot of work to do,” says Rizzo. The gains made in the union’s new contract “will ultimately help create a fairer workplace and hopefully provide decent wages that would support a more diverse and equitable workplace.” But, he warns: “A union agreement is not a miracle solution to fix everything.
For many museum workers, forming a union is just part of an effort to change the institutional culture from the inside out – correcting decades of hiring and collecting practices that have tended to disproportionately place white men in positions of power and the work of white male artists in galleries.
