WHAT:  Strike Deadline at the Brooklyn Museum

WHEN:  Wednesday, November 8, 2023

WHERE:  In front of the Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway

October 27, 2023 – Unionized staff of the Brooklyn Museum, members of Local 2110 UAW, have set a strike deadline and will begin picketing the Museum on Wednesday, November 8, if no agreement on a contract is reached before that date.

“We have been trying to negotiate a fair contract with the Museum for two years and at this point, we feel we have no choice but to set a strike deadline,” said Elizabeth St. George, an assistant curator of Decorative Arts. “I love the Museum and what I do, but it’s a struggle to make ends meet.”

The staff’s union, Local 2110 UAW, has been in negotiations for a first union contract since January of 2022 and has held repeated protests at the Museum over its low wage offer and unfair labor practices. Workers say salaries at the Brooklyn Museum have been stagnant for years and point to an exodus of employees over the last two years.

“Low salaries and lack of real career development are making long tenure at the Brooklyn Museum unsustainable,” said Lauren Bradley, an associate conservator who has worked at the Museum for more than 8 years. “I’ve seen several extremely qualified professionals leave my department for better offers elsewhere. We’re responsible for the care of an incredibly important collection of more than a million objects; but, as a staff, we’re undervalued.”

The Union has filed numerous unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over the Museum’s repeatedly changing employment terms without notice or bargaining and its assignment of union work to non-union workers, temporary staff and contractors.  The Labor Board has issued a formal complaint against the Museum which is scheduled to go to trial before an administrative law judge.

“It’s not only that our salaries are low,” says Samantha Cortez, a Senior Registrar. “It’s the bad faith the Museum has exhibited. They’ve shown a real lack of respect for the contribution of the staff and for the union bargaining process itself. Our hard work is behind the Museum’s incredible exhibitions and programs but they don’t acknowledge it meaningfully.”

The Union has proposed increases totaling 19.5% over a four-and-a-half-year contract. The Union also wants part-time staff, including the museum’s educators, to receive the same percentage increases as other staff. The Union also wants the right to have an outside, neutral arbitrator review disputes over position grade levels and guaranteed minimum raises when an employee is promoted.

“Museum staff need to be recognized and compensated fairly,” says Owen O’Brien, Development Campaign Manager. “We work hard every day and we make the wonderful exhibitions and programs of this Museum possible.”

Staff of the Brooklyn Museum voted overwhelmingly to unionize in August 2021 with Local 2110 of the UAW, a technical, office and professional union that represents workers in museums, cultural institutions and universities. In recent years, thousands of museum workers have organized and fought for higher wages. Local 2110 recently settled successful contracts with the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Hispanic Society Museum and Library.

Communicate with: Maida Rosenstein, Director of Organizing, maidarosenstein@2110uaw.org, 917.495.8492

On the morning of Monday, October 30th, the UAW reached a historic tentative agreement with General Motors that paves the way for a just transition and wins record economic gains for autoworkers.

Like the agreements with Ford and Stellantis, the GM agreement has turned record profits into a record contract. The deal includes gains valued at more than four times the gains from the union’s 2019 contract. It provides more in base wage increases than GM workers have received in the past 22 years.

The agreement grants 25% in base wage increases through April 2028, and will cumulatively raise the top wage by 33% compounded with estimated COLA to over $42 an hour. The starting wage will increase by 70% compounded with estimated COLA, to over $30 an hour.

The GM agreement kills several wage tiers that have divided the union. It will lift up those members who have been left behind and unify our membership for the fights ahead. The workers who will now be moved to the main production rate include GMCH workers, CCA workers, and workers at GM Brownstown. For the first time since they organized in the 1990s, GM salaried workers will receive a general wage increase, equivalent to that of hourly workers. The deal also brings two key groups into the UAW GM Master Agreement, at Ultium Cells and GM Subsystems LLC. Both of these groups have been left out of the Master Agreement, and have been told they would never come in.

Many thought GM would never put more money on the table for their hundreds of thousands of retirees. In this agreement, however, GM has agreed to make five payments of $500 to current retirees and surviving spouses, the first such payments in over 15 years.

The agreement reinstates major benefits lost during the Great Recession, including Cost-of-Living Allowances and a three-year Wage Progression, as well as killing divisive wage tiers in the union. It improves retirement for current retirees, those workers with pensions, and those who have 401(k) plans. Like the other two, the GM deal includes a right to strike over plant closures.

GM workers will return to work while the agreement goes through the ratification process, with the UAW National GM Council convening in Detroit to review the agreement.

All three of the Big Three now have a tentative agreement with the UAW. All three agreements break records and better unite our union.

 

ARLINGTON, Texas – On Tuesday morning, 5,000 members at Arlington Assembly joined the Stand Up Strike, shutting down production at General Motors’ largest plant and biggest moneymaker.

The workers who make some of GM’s most profitable vehicles, the Chevy Tahoe, Chevy Suburban, GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade, are joining the unprecedented Stand Up Strike against all three of the Big Three automakers. The move comes just hours after GM reported third-quarter earnings of $3.5 billion, one day after the union struck Stellantis’ largest plant, Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP), and just a few days after the union detailed the shortcomings of GM’s latest contract offer.

“Another record quarter, another record year. As we’ve said for months: record profits equal record contracts.” said UAW President Shawn Fain. “It’s time GM workers, and the whole working class, get their fair share.”

Despite having made $10 billion in profits in the past nine months, breaking revenue records for another consecutive quarter, and beating Wall Street expectations, GM’s latest offer fails to reward UAW members for the profits they’ve generated. GM’s offer lags behind Ford, with the company proposing a two-tier wage progression, the weakest 401(k) contribution offer on the table, a deficient COLA and other shortcomings. On the heels of their previous quarter, which set “a post-bankruptcy record” in terms of revenue, it is clear that GM can afford a record contract and do more to repair the harm done by years of falling real wages and declining standards across the Big Three.

The unannounced walkout at Arlington Assembly brings the total number of UAW members on strike at the Big Three automakers to over 45,000, as the strike nears the six-week mark.

The Stand Up Strike is a new approach to striking. It is the first time the union has struck all Big Three automakers at the same time. But instead of all 150,000 UAW autoworkers walking out at once, select locals have been called on to “Stand Up” and strike.

The strike began on Sept. 15 with a walkout against three assembly plants in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. It has since grown to include eight assembly plants and 38 parts distribution centers in 22 states.

This is the third time that the UAW has launched a surprise strike against a plant. During the first month of the strike, the union set a deadline in advance and expanded the strike if an automaker failed to make progress toward a fair agreement. That phase of the strike did produce significant movement, but then the Big Three began to slow walk bargaining until just before each deadline.

On Oct. 11, the UAW began a new phase of the Stand Up Strike when it launched a surprise strike against Ford’s iconic and highly profitable Kentucky Truck Plant. In that unannounced move, 8,700 UAW members walked off the job at 6:30 p.m. and shut down the Louisville, Ky. plant.

Ford, GM and Stellantis made a quarter-trillion dollars in North American profits over the last decade. They made a combined $21 billion in total profits in just the first six months of this year. And yet all of them are still refusing to settle contracts that give workers a fair share of the record profits they’ve earned.