Unionised staff at the Whitney Museum of American Art plan to begin a strike on 5 October if a fair contract agreement cannot be reached with the museum’s leadership. Workers claim their salaries are inadequate in light of inflation and the cost of living in New York, and have raised concerns around rising healthcare costs and premiums.
The three-year contract between the Whitney and unionised staff under United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110 expired in June this year. Entry-level staff were given a raise from $17 to $24 per hour, and were promised provisions like benefit contributions and gradual professional development. But the union claims the museum’s offers have been insufficient, and state that it has been negotiating with the Whitney since May without reaching a resolution.
The union is calling for the museum to raise salaries to $71,000 per year, a figure cited in an annual New York City cost of living report as the minimum needed for a single adult to afford to live in the city. The union has also pointed to the Whitney’s more than $1bn endowment and executive compensation as evidence that it believes the museum has the resources to meet its demands.
One of the museum workers represented by UAW Local 2110, Micah Musheno, has been working at the Whitney for nearly a decade. As an undergraduate student, she joined the museum as an intern in the curatorial department, working under Elisabeth Sussman, who was then the curator of photography. She interned for three semesters—a full calendar year—completely unpaid, as the museum’s internship programme at the time did not provide a stipend.
“But I loved the work, and I loved the projects I was working on,” Musheno tells The Art Newspaper. “And I let them know that I would love to return after graduating.”
When Musheno graduated in 2016, she was hired into a project-based role in the curatorial department, working as a second assistant to Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s director who was then its chief curator, then moved over to become Sussman’s curatorial assistant while her then-curatorial assistant was on leave. Her contract was extended and she moved through several roles before being given a full-time position in 2018 as the licensing manager.
“The Whitney is the only place I’ve ever worked,” Musheno says. “Turnover has been a real thing at the museum in the last couple of years. I felt that I have a lot of institutional knowledge and would be important to be a voice for my colleagues, and that’s why I joined the negotiating committee.”
The Whitney union voted to authorise strike action in mid-September alongside workers at the Brooklyn Museum and the American Folk Art Museum, which are represented by the UAW Local 2110. The three unions initially authorised their bargaining committees to set strike deadlines if agreements could not be reached. (Workers at the Brooklyn Museum have since reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, which union members are voting on this week, potentially averting a strike there.)
The possible strike at the Whitney could disrupt plans around a forthcoming retrospective dedicated to Roy Lichtenstein, Like New, which opens on 11 October. The press and member previews for the exhibition begin on 6 October, with the preview reception the following day and several other VIP and donor events on the calendar.
Maida Rosenstein, the director of organising for UAW Local 2110, says the strike is currently open-ended and could continue indefinitely. A spokesperson for the museum says that the Whitney “continues bargaining in good faith and remains committed to arriving at a fair, reasonable contract that respects the needs of all parties”.
UAW Local 2110 has organised unions at a number of New York cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. The union is currently bargaining with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Noguchi Museum, where workers separately voted to authorise strikes earlier this year.
