Advocacy
Viewpoints: The Museum of Modern Art
As part of our commitment to bringing relevant issues in the field to our membership, CAA has commissioned statements from both sides of the union strike at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The following statements do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the College Art Association.From the Director of The Museum of Modern Art
For most of its 29-year history at The Museum of Modern Art, the Professional and Administrative Staff at The Museum of Modern Art (PASTA) was a quasi-autonomous organization directed and administered by museum staff. Together, the museum and the union developed a constructive relationship, building salaries, benefits, and working conditions for a great staff.
In recent years, PASTA ceded direction and control to Local 2110, United Auto Workers, which has taken an adversarial position toward the museum.
Out of touch with its membership and threatened by the cooperative working relationship with the museum, the union has tried to undermine the harmonious relationship built up over years of mutual effort and respect. A superb benefit package shared by management and the union is now eyed with suspicion. Fair salaries, superior to amounts paid elsewhere for similar work, are arbitrarily rejected. Other benefits are ignored or taken for granted.
The museum made a fair offer, which includes a 3 percent raise in each year of a 3-year contract; extraordinary health and dental benefits; other benefits including four to six weeks annual vacation (plus holidays and personal days), subsidized meals, and increased funds for tuition reimbursement and child care subsidy; unlimited recall rights during the course of construction of our new building and generous severance payments in the event of layoffs (far more than what the union demanded); and creation of a supplemental pension plan with automatic contributions for low-paid staff and matching contributions for all staff.
The museum remains committed to its staff and to finding a way to bringstriking colleagues and friends back to work. The union's militant approach comes at a cost: half of the bargaining unit, including nearly all of the curatorial staff, is at work and opposes the strident position taken by the UAW.
--Glenn D. Lowry, Director, The Museum of Modern Art
From the PASTA Union
The Professional and Administrative Staff Association (PASTA) at The Museum of Modern Art, comprising curators, librarians, archivists, registrars, educators, editors, conservators, and administrative staff, has been on strike since April 28. The basic issues include wages, the security of our healthcare coverage, and union rights. Of the five unions at MoMA, PASTA has the lowest entry-level salary ($17,000/year) and median pay ($28,000). Employees in other unions are paid at much higher rates. For example, security guards at MoMA start at a rate 50 percent higher than entry-level PASTA employees; and art handlers at a rate 88 percent higher.
Not coincidentally, PASTA is the only union at MoMA that is predominantly female. PASTA proposes a 5 percent increase the first year and a 4 percent increase each year thereafter. The museum's final offer is 3 percent for each year, the lowest percentage increase it has offered ever. The museum has also demanded the unilateral right to control our health benefits and to impose changes at any time during the life of the contract.
The museum claims that its final offer accords with industry standards and conditions in the nonprofit sector. Given MoMA's budget surplus, aggressive membership and fundraising campaigns, and successful entrepreneurial projects (like e-commerce), its assertions run thin, especially for an industry that is moving fast in the corporate direction. Considering the actual cost of living in New York and the hundreds of hours of uncompensated overtime worked by PASTA employees, our demands are modest. The museum's offer of 3 percent effectively gives an increase on $17K of $9.81/week or 28 cents/work hour; and on $28K, $16.15/week or 46 cents/work hour. PASTA is the largest union in the museum and has the most number of members who work the most number of uncompensated overtime hours.
The outdated but pervasive notion that one has to be independently wealthy to work in the arts renders the profession economically exclusive and homogenizes the art community. And to accept enormous financial constraints in order to work in the arts is self-denigratng. It is time to reckon with the fact that nonprofits are generally powered by underpaid professionals who, in many cases, lack healthcare coverage. Museum work is neither intellectual hobby nor privilege but a profession that exacts rigor and intelligence. It is incumbent on all art professionals to safeguard the profession's integrity against a mentality that trivializes the scholarship and crucial meaning of art.
--PASTA-MoMA Negotiating Committee