Courtesy of the artist. Watch yourself, readers — that machete is sharp!

It shouldn’t be surprising to see museum workers organizing unions, when we are in the midst of an upsurge of labor protest. But only a few years ago, who would have thought these people, long taken for granted by their museum directors, invisible to the art world and ignored by the media, would become front page news?

Why museum workers are organizing

When we think of museum workers, we may think of the curators whose names we see in art reviews or museum publicity. Overlooked are the museum workers we actually encounter — the security guards in the galleries, the public-facing staff at information booths, behind the counters in the shop or selling us tickets, or taking our coats, or leading tours. Not to mention the more invisible staff assisting the curators, creating the publicity and developing the website, digitizing the collection, or the art handlers who move and install the art work.

It’s a bit of a shocker when news stories reveal their wages. At these cultural institutions so precious to us, many or even most of their workers do not even make a living wage, some only minimum wage or a few quarters above. “Ancient art, Ancient wages,” chanted by striking Museum of Fine Arts workers, speaks for museum workers nationwide.

Guerrilla Girl at the MCA Union’s one-day strike, from their Instagram.

When a few museum workers published the crowdsourced “Arts + All Museums Salary Transparency” Google sheet, over 3,000 more shared their salaries and benefits. Now people could look at pay for their and other job categories, and they saw the exploitation was systemic and nation-wide. Of course they would start talking union — they were seeing unequal pay for the same work, white men making more than women and people of color, and museum directors earning earning high six figures while denying even cost-of-living raises to their employees.

A union wrests wage and benefit data from the employer when bargaining begins. This makes the system-wide injustices personal, another critical moment when power shifts to the workers.  That was when the Philadelphia Museum of Art Union learned that one in five employees were making less than $15/hr, half of the hourly part-time employees were making less than $12/hr, and 60% of full-time employees were making less than $50,000/yr. They also learned how much less they were earning than their peers at other museums — about 1/3 less than median pay in their region and their peer group nationally.

Awareness of these wage disparities compounded dismay over other museum scandals. For years arts activists were calling for a “racial reckoning” over museum hierarchy, collection and exhibition; exposing sexual misconduct and bullying by managers; and protesting donors for egregiously immoral exploitation.

Eleven museums unionized in 2019, but since then another 23 formed, as both mass layoffs during the pandemic and the George Floyd uprising exposed every injustice with a new urgency. Museum workers were not only demanding (and winning) some dramatic pay increases, such as The New Museum Union’s $6,000 increase for the lowest paid full-time employees.* They were making a broad claim for a share in power within the institution, which only unionization could give them.

They were demanding and winning

• protection from overwork and assignments outside of their job description;
• protection from discipline and firing without just cause;
• measures for health and safety;
• and notice before layoffs, with severance pay and continuation of health insurance.

                                                   The Museum Union Wave, by Lela Johnson. Courtesy of the artist.

“We’re so over these systems of oppression.”

These are the more familiar trade union concerns. But the unions were forming during a broad confluence of social struggles, and workers in many museums were placing these demands in the broader context of racism, gender discrimination and anticapitalism. Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, immigration demonstrations, Native American pipeline protests, the Sanders campaign, the Resistance against Trump were spilling over into museums, with museum activists out in the street and then leading widely publicized attacks on museum culture.

Looking at photos on the websites of these new unions —like the photo of the MOCA Union below — you’ll see the faces of young and racially diverse staff. These are the people who are energizing the wave of unionization in cultural institutions, media, and tech, struggling with student debt and unaffordable rents, unwilling to settle for a cool job instead of a sustainable wage. This is not a patient generation. “We’re so over these systems of oppression,” a Museum of Fine Arts unionist told a reporter. They may have been propelled into their union struggle for wages and job protections, but these new unions also have centered anti-racism and solidarity with other labor struggles.

Museum organizing draws power from Black Lives Matter

The power of the uprising converged with museum activism. Activists were seeing the fight against racism and for unions coalesce, linking race and class politics. So at the Penn Museum, where some workers were paid only $10/hr., Penn Museum Workers United asked, “How can museums show a real commitment to diversity, equity, access, and inclusion? Pay ALL employees wages they can live on and build a career on!” At the Metropolitan Museum workers decried a “culture of systemic racism,” and Guggenheim curators demanded thoroughgoing change to “an inequitable work environment that enables racism, white supremacy, and other discriminatory practices.” The MFA union, on strike, called for diversity in hiring as one of its main demands. MCA Chicago staff demanded “accountability and action to uproot white supremacy and racial injustice at the MCA.” You can get an idea of the way museum workers are talking about workplace racism and sexism from their anonymous Instagram posts at Change the Museum.

If you listen to what museum workers are saying in interviews and look at their social media, you see a common theme: They want museum leadership to live up to the values they profess. Some museums made public statements with commitments to social justice — in particular, antiracism, with explicit support of Black Lives Matter and the George Floyd uprising. And some museum leaders walked back inept and vague statements that showed how out of touch they were — out of touch with mainstream discourse about race and years of antiracist protest, but also out of touch with their own employees.

The Art Institute of Chicago had the most developed antiracist commitment in its identity statement. Still, its staff union, AICWU, called out “the structures in the museum that uphold systemic racism” and formed a union that would address AIC’s “colonialist legacy” by “center[ing] the experiences and voices of BIPOC staff.”

The Illuminator collective projected these words onto the Guggenheim Museum when the museum slow-walked bargaining with the Guggenheim Union (IUE 30). Screenshot from The Illuminator’s video.

Performative Empathy?

Aside from the obligatory empathy for their workers of color, did museums show concern for their employees? Their stereotypical mission statements boasted about their collections, their stewardship, their educational role and their dedication to serving the public — with no recognition of the employees who made it all possible.

There were, however, museums whose statements recognized their staff. “The Whitney thrives because of relationships — among artists, audiences, staff, and board alike — forged from dialogue, premised on respect, and committed to a shared purpose.” But the Art Institute puts all other museums to shame, encouraging “a culture of hospitality, empathy and gratitude for each visitor, supporter and member of our staff … developing greater trust, engagement, and belonging among staff … elevating the voices of BIPOC staff and increasing the number of BIPOC colleagues in senior positions; and to investing  in a more inclusive staff and Board of Trustees … listening to — and respectfully learning from — staff, visitors and supporters; artists and makers; students and educators; and community leaders and organizers.” The whole statement is worth reading, with its land acknowledgement recognizing the museum is “located on the traditional unceded homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and  Potawatomi Nations”;  its self-criticism about its collection’s “white, Western European, and male” scope of its “exclusionary past,” its impact on the present in multicultural Chicago; and its “intersectional and ongoing efforts” to create an antiracist culture.

Would these museums have recognized all their staff if it weren’t for the pressure to commit to BIPOC staff? Reading their statements and dating them, it becomes apparent that “diversity” and “equity” is the context for their statements valuing all staff. The Art Institute of Chicago’s statement was quite startling in a museum of such size and importance. It was right after the George Floyd uprising that this empathic identity statement appeared on its website.**

The Art Institute’s words were indeed exemplary. But when empathy met the pandemic, the museum laid off 76 people and furloughed 109. Unsurprisingly, instead of agreeing to voluntary union recognition, it forced employees into a costly election and is trying to exclude 20 workers from the bargaining unit.

Do museum leaders mean what they say, or are the words just the obligatory rituals of public relations? Does anyone pay attention?Normally, maybe not. But even hollow words can suddenly fill with meaning when union members call out their hypocrisy at a high-profile opening or donor event. And union demands that their museums live up to their ideals became hard to ignore when the union campaigns were joined by the George Floyd uprising, which brought up to 26 million people into the streets and galvanized other protest movements. The coming together of Black Lives Matter with workers organizing for fair treatment brings a new element of hope for staff and danger for management. It can also give a deeper meaning to a union drive, giving workers a sense that they are making history, the way ordinary people do when they are caught up in events larger than themselves.
—Paul Elitzik

Reprint terms: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (not including MCA, MOCA and Illuminator images).

In the second part of this article, coming next week, I will suggest that museum workers, a fraction of the work force, occupy a small but strategic niche for labor organizing due to their cultural centrality. Related to this, I will argue that museum management has a strategic vulnerability, making them a target and justifying the considerable resources some unions are devoting to organizing their workers. 

Note: I am a proud member of AICWU, Art Institute of Chicago Workers United, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute Museum workers are also in AICWU, but in a separate bargaining unit. The museum workers won their union recognition vote 142-44, with 20 challenged by management; the school: 115-48, with 44 challenged.

 

*The New Museum Union won huge gains after bitter and drawn-out bargaining. When they voted 69-3 to strike before the opening of the museum’s Hans Haacke exhibition, the museum quickly came to terms. The union won a five-year contract bringing the lowest pay to $46,000. Still too low for New York, but it was $35,000 before the union drive began, $40,000 before the contract was signed. Pay increases in the first year of the contract averaged 8% for full-time and 15% for part-time workers. Contract gains included firing and discipline only for just cause; layoffs by seniority, severance pay, right to fill open positions according to seniority; grievance procedure with arbitration; increased paid time off; extra pay for employees taking on someone else’s work. Dana Kopel, one of the union’s leaders, wrote about the experience in “Against Artsploitation”  and, with Lily Bartle, described the campaign in an interview in Burnaway.

**The Art Institute’s identity statement with its recognition of their staff is dated Dec. 18, 2020, in the Google search return.

Acknowledgements:
Thanks to Eric J. Garcia for the cartoon. This cartoon may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes with proper attribution to the artist. F Newsmagazine, the student newsmagazine of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, hosts his cartoon archive here. For his paintings, graphic work and exhibitions, look here.   The list of exhibitions mentions his piece in the Met, but not his videos and political cartoons in last year’s MCA Chicago exhibition of Chicago comic artists.

Thanks to Lela Johnson, infographics editor at F Newsmagazine, for “The Museum Union Wave.” I gathered the data, describing unions formed from January 1, 2015, through January  2022. You can find the data on this Google sheet, still under construction, rough work, just sharing some research so others can do more with it. Lela’s infographic may be used for non-commercial purposes with proper attribution to the artist.