Hundreds of staff members at the Metropolitan Museum of Art have voted to unionize, labor organizers and the museum announced on Friday, forming one of the country’s largest bargaining units within a cultural institution.
Employees voted 542 to 172 in favor of joining Local 2110 of the United Automobile Workers, a driving force in the unionization of New York arts organizations that has spent the past five years quietly laying the groundwork for this vote. The bargaining unit includes employees from a variety of departments including curatorial, conservation, education and retail.
“Our expertise and our labor have real value,” Stephanie Post, a digital archivist who has worked at the Met for more than 30 years, said in a statement released by Local 2110. “By unionizing, we aren’t just protecting our jobs — we are building a collective voice to ensure every staff member, now and in the future, gets the respect and protection they deserve.”
The exact size of the bargaining unit is still being determined because museum officials challenged the eligibility of more than 100 employees; the union said it could ultimately represent nearly 900 people, about half of the museum’s entire work force. Hundreds of other employees, including security guards, are already represented by two other unions.
“As one of the world’s leading art museums, the Met has long been committed to supporting its exceptional staff with highly competitive salaries and benefit packages that surpass industry standards,” Ann Bailis, a museum spokeswoman, said in a statement.
The museum said that more than 600 of its nearly 2,000 employees earn above $100,000 a year, and that salaries have increased by an average of 4 percent every year in the last five years.
Local 2110 represents over a dozen museums and several other arts organizations. Employees from the Brooklyn Museum, Guggenheim Museum, New Museum, Jewish Museum, Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art are included among its members.
In the weeks ahead of the vote, some Met employees circulated a letter supporting the union. “We hear praise for our work at staff meetings, but we feel the daily strain of huge workloads,” said the letter, which was later posted on social media. “We hear apologies for the toll taken on us, but without collective bargaining, our power over our own working conditions is illusory.”
Zachary Small is a Times reporter writing about the art world’s relationship to money, politics and technology.
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