We are The Met Union!
We are a broad and varied group of Met staff from different departments, including long-time and newer staff, salaried, hourly, part time and contract staff. We came together originally to share information and discuss how to improve our conditions in the Museum. Ultimately, it became clear that the only way to make real and lasting change was to unionize. We reached out to Local 2110 of the UAW, a union that represents many cultural and educational institutions in New York, to talk through a plan for organizing. We are looking forward to our vote to certify our union.
Why Unionize?
Salary
A union contract can establish guaranteed minimum rates for positions, guarantee annual raises, establish seniority step increases for employees, and guarantee promotional increases.
Benefits
With a union contract, the Museum cannot change or reduce benefits without bargaining with the union. The union membership can use its collective power to preserve and improve benefits. Unionized museum workers have protected and improved their health benefits, child care and family benefits, retirement benefits, PTO and professional development.
Flexible Hours
A union contract can maintain the flexibility you like about your workplace regardless of leadership changes and can create a clear process to request flexible hours.
Discipline and Discharge
All Local 2110 contracts establish the requirement of “just cause” for discipline and discharge, so that employees are no longer considered “at will” and the burden of proof to demonstrate that an employee is at fault is on the employer.
Additional Work and Overtime
A union contract can guarantee additional pay for having to perform additional work duties.
Layoffs
A union contract can guarantee severance, enforce recall rights, consider seniority, and provide advance notice or additional pay in the case of a layoff. Moreover, with a union, we can hold management accountable for layoffs or cutbacks and insist that they provide credible information substantiating the need for layoffs.
Health and Safety
A union contract can set specific health and safety policies that address specific concerns within a workplace, including hazard pay, reimbursements for safety equipment as needed, limited exposure to severe weather, etc. Health and safety protection in museums is of growing importance because of climate change, large crowds, exhibition turnover, etc.
Grievances
With a union contract, grievances can be appealed to an outside, neutral arbitrator whose decisions are legally binding. Employees have a right to due process and union representation throughout the procedure. Discrimination cases can be brought through the union contract without waiver of an individual’s rights to bring their own case to a government agency.
FAQs
The purpose of a union is to establish the right to collectively bargain a legally binding contract that protects employee compensation and benefits, and establishes workplace rights and job security. By banding together as employees and forming a union, we have more power and leverage to negotiate for better conditions.
Local 2110 represents thousands of technical, office, and professional workers throughout the area, including the professional and administrative staff of MoMA, the New Museum, the New-York Historical Society, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Columbia University, New York University, the ACLU, and, more recently, the MFA Boston, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Brooklyn Museum, MASS MoCA, , the Hispanic Society, the Tenement Museum, the Shed, the Portland Museum of Art, and many other places. The UAW is one of the most powerful unions in the country and provides our local union with resources and expertise to assist us in legal issues, organizing, civil rights, legislative action, and health and safety work.
When we form a union, we will poll membership and work to build proposals to address specific issues at the Met, either through improving upon current policies or protecting current policies we like.
Unionized workers at the MFA Boston just won a strong second contract. Their bargaining committee worked hard to read through current policies, handbooks, and practices to draft contract language that would make sense for their workplace.
Wages
Through collective bargaining and action, unionized museum staff have improved their salary system by eliminating an antiquated salary grade system that purposefully valued “corporate” titles over “traditional” museum titles (e.g. PR and development positions versus conservators and librarians), achieved parity among conservation and curatorial titles, raised overall minimums substantially, and established guaranteed annual increases for all bargaining unit employees. They also won guaranteed promotional increases and guaranteed differential pay for additional duties due to vacancies. Since ratifying their contract in July 2022, the union has already won back pay for MFA Boston workers who have taken on additional responsibilities.
Temporary Employees and Term employees:
Workers at the MFA won protections against the museum unfairly using temporary employees in lieu of permanent bargaining unit employees. The MFA also has a long established practice of keeping certain employees as “term”, some of whom have worked consistently at the museum for years. In the contract, they established a committee to discuss the status of term employees at the museum, and, while not in the contract, through negotiations on this topic, pushed the museum to transition over 20 positions from term to permanent on the regular operating budget.
DEIA
They also won enforceable DEIA language with paid training and transparency surrounding staff demographics.
Improved Benefits
Workers at museums have secured and improved health benefits, child care leave and retirement benefits.
Workplace Rights
Museum contracts include layoff protection and severance benefits, legally enforceable grievance rights, protection against arbitrary, unfair treatment, health and safety protection and preference for transfers and promotions.other museum workers won through unionization?
Full-time, and part-time, exempt and non-exempt, professional and non-professional staff throughout the Museum who are not already represented by another union (DC37 or IATSE) are eligible.
It’s not unusual for employers to “weaponize” eligibility in an anti-union campaign by telling people that they won’t be eligible for the union and are therefore not allowed to talk about the union. This is a scare tactic and a way of creating internal division.
Many museums have multiple unions that represent different occupations. We look forward to working in solidarity with our fellow unions.
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Contact Us
We are organizing for a broad, democratic and inclusive union, and we want as many of us as possible to be involved in our union. Hundreds of us have already been actively organizing but if this is new information to you, there are a multitude of ways to get involved. Email us at metunion@2110uaw.org for more information.
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