Guggenheim Museum Curators Moved to Join an Association


For decades there was no union at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, but now its curators, conservators, editors and other employees are organizing with a local affiliated with United Auto Workers, aiming to create the latter in a little over two years.

Workers in similar jobs are already part of collective bargaining units at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

On Friday, Local 2110, the UAW Technical, Office, and Professional Union filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board requesting that Guggenheim employees be authorized to vote on the union, local president Maida Rosenstein said.

He said he sent an email message to the Guggenheim’s director, Richard Armstrong, announcing that the petition had been filed.

“We respectfully request the Museum not to delay the election or campaign against the workers’ choice to unionize freely,” he said in part of the email. “Other institutions remained neutral and did not interfere with unionization votes.”

In 2019, shortly before art workers, maintenance technicians and other Guggenheim staff voted to join the 30th Local member of the International Association of Management Engineers, union officials emailed Mr Armstrong to museum workers that he believed a union would bring divisiveness. He said he sent the message. enters the institution on a daily basis.

On Friday, the Guggenheim released a statement acknowledging that it had received a petition to form a new union at the museum, saying it “recognised its employees’ right to collectively bargain.”

“The museum will announce the next steps shortly,” the statement said.

Ms Rosenstein said the proposed bargaining unit would represent approximately 160 professional and nonprofessional workers, including visitor services workers and some day laborers such as museum educators.

Despite years of debate among Guggenheim staff about creating a collective bargaining unit to represent its professional staff, employees said there was new pressure during the pandemic.

“Unionization is becoming more common, especially in our own field,” said digital co-producer Julie Smitka, who is involved in organizing efforts at the Guggenheim. “There have been layoffs and layoffs at many institutions during the pandemic and I think that has turned the wheels on what a union can do for us.”

Ms. Smitka said that many of her colleagues are concerned with job security, pay equity and health insurance. Rosemary Taylor, another Guggenheim employee involved in the union campaign, said “racial equality and diversity” and transparency in decision-making were also important issues.

Taylor, who is a teaching artist at a Guggenheim program that sends artists to public schools, said many employees would like to learn more about what museum officials are planning and have a chance to talk about issues that affect them.

“We want our voices to be heard,” he said. “We want to make the work we love better so we can keep doing them.”

A wave of organizing that began nearly two and a half years ago has prompted workers to form unions at institutions around the country, including the New Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.



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