Like New York City Hispanic Society Museum and Library prepares to reopen its doors next month after a six-year closure of most of its Upper Manhattan campus, its unionized staff members voted to strike starting March 27. Museum workers unionized in 2021. After a year of contract negotiations following the museum’s board of trustees’ decision to end the employee pension plan, staff cited the institution’s management’s chronic injustice and non-transparency as leaving them no choice but to go on strike.
“We are a small, dedicated team that has worked in challenging physical conditions with constant staff shortages,” Javier Milligan, librarian at the Hispanic Society, said in a statement. “We accepted lower wages than we could earn at other institutions because of benefits. The contract they’re offering makes our job really unsustainable.
According to the union’s statement, the contract proposed by museum management requires employees to pay health care premiums and deductibles that were previously paid for by the establishment, a change that salary increases will not compensate for. The union also alleges management attempts to shield positions from union eligibility by incorrectly listing positions as temporary, compounding understaffing issues.
On February 3, staff raised their concerns in an open letter to the company’s board of directors, emphasizing “collection risk”, insufficient resources and the inability to replace the departing staff, resulting in an impossible workload for the remaining staff. The letter also described the work environment within the institution as “hostile, toxic and confrontational,” a byproduct of administrative opacity.
“The decisions of the administration jeopardize its priceless treasures, from day-to-day management to long-term planning. The administration has failed to replace key collection maintenance personnel, such as curators, restorers and art managers, which places intolerable stress on those who protect the collection,” said Patrick Lenaghan, a curator who worked at the Hispanic Society for 28 years. A declaration. “The company is putting its own valuable collection at risk: we are severely understaffed and our incredible collection is at risk due to a lack of proper safeguards.”
The Hispanic Society was founded in 1904 by philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington as the Spanish Museum of Art. Its scope has since widened somewhat to focus on creative output from Spain, Portugal, Latin America and the Philippines. A self-proclaimed “champion of Spain in America”, Huntington has amassed a world-class collection of Latinx artwork unparalleled in the United States.
The institution’s campus, located on the edge of the Washington Heights neighborhood, has been closed to the public since 2017 for “extensive renovations” and is scheduled to reopen on April 6. It remains to be seen how the strike will affect the planned reopening. A spokesperson for the Hispanic Society did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Employees of the Hispanic Society formed a union (like many in New York’s cultural institutions, with United Auto Workers Local 2110) in 2021, as staff at many major US museums voted overwhelmingly to do the sameciting longstanding problems in the sector which had been exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many new unions saw negotiations over their first contracts drag on for months or even years, although this rarely resulted in workers striking. In particular, employees of the Philadelphia Museum of Art went on strike last fall for three weeks after negotiations over their first contract reached an impasse.
