Amid plans to maneuver ahead with mass layoffs on the Brooklyn Museum, members of the establishment’s two unions rallied outdoors the principle entrance on Japanese Parkway on Tuesday (25 February) to protest the plan to terminate 47 workers by 10 March. Members of United Auto Staff (UAW) Native 2110 and Native 1502 of District Council 37—a division of the DC 37 union that represents artwork handlers, curatorial assistants and upkeep employees—gathered to make their issues recognized to the general public and to museum management. Staff represented by the unions vary from clerical employees, assistants, educators, curators, conservators, guards and retail employees to technicians.
Chants of “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” may very well be heard all alongside Japanese Parkway. Individuals from different establishments, together with the Whitney Museum of American Artwork, had been current to assist their colleagues. Passersby joined in by honking and shouting: “Brooklyn is a union city!” Inside half an hour, the group grew to no less than 100 as folks stepped as much as the bullhorn to offer speeches.
In keeping with Wilson Souffrant, the president of Native 1502, the rally was deliberate for the night of the Chairman’s Dinner—an occasion for main donors and trustees—to place strain on the establishment, which is celebrating its Two hundredth anniversary this yr. Visitor audio system on the rally included Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso, alongside New York Metropolis council members Crystal Hudson and Justin Brannan.
“The Two hundredth-anniversary occasion that it is celebrating wouldn’t be potential with out the exact same employees that the museum needs to put off,” Maida Rosenstein, director of organising for UAW Native 2110, tells The Artwork Newspaper.
Management has cited an growing finances deficit of practically $10m as the explanation for slicing important employees, programming and scaling again exhibitions. On 7 February, Anne Pasternak, the museum’s director, posted a press release saying, partially: “Our analysis and planning work explored all avenues for monetary aid earlier than turning to the elimination of positions.” Each unions say that they weren’t consulted previous to the layoff announcement—and that the plan violates union contracts.
Whereas talking on the rally, Reynoso referred to as on New York Metropolis’s mayor, Eric Adams, and the native authorities to cowl the deficit. Hudson agreed that “$10m is a drop within the bucket” for town to assist stability out and spoke about how cultural employees can’t proceed to beg for funding yr after yr. Brannan equally shared that he and his colleagues didn’t combat so arduous to reverse finances cuts to cultural establishments final yr simply to make method for workers reductions. “We have to see if we are able to discover some financial savings in different places. Shedding employees ought to by no means be on the desk,” Brannan stated.
Brooklyn’s borough president, Antonio Reynoso, speaks on the protest Picture: Elly Belle
Of the practically 50 workers set to be lower, 19 are members of Native 1502 and 21 are members of UAW Native 2110. The remaining workers are non-union and occupy managerial roles. Since receiving the information, union management has despatched a cease-and-desist letter to the museum to cease the layoffs, and the unions have tried to cut price with administration. The rally is the newest stopgap in making an attempt to leverage the court docket of public opinion, to motive with museum management and to demand the establishment discover various choices to layoffs.
“Our function is to let all these donors and trustees coming in know that the museum just isn’t doing what they assume they’re,” Souffrant says. “They’re speaking about fairness and variety, however on the finish of the day, they had been spending lavishly, realizing that there is going to be a time the place there’s going to be a layoff.”
Souffrant emphasises that DC 37 efficiently negotiated a furlough as a substitute of layoffs again in 2016, and that it will be potential to stave off layoffs once more, if museum management had been bargaining in good religion—which union members say just isn’t the case. This all comes at a time when the Nationwide Labor Relations Board has successfully been shut down by the Trump administration, and there’s little to no oversight on wrongful labour practices.
Pasternak has defended the layoffs by noting that salaries make up 70% of the museum’s operational finances, which stands at $64m for the 2025 fiscal yr. Greater than $1m went to Pasternak’s wage in 2023, in accordance with publicly accessible filings. In keeping with her letter, leaders on the museum plan to take pay cuts of as much as 20%. The establishment additionally plans to lower the variety of exhibitions per yr from round 12 to a mean of 9, scale back weeknight occasions and improve weekend occasions. It has additionally suspended its trademark First Saturdays programming. Rosenstein and Souffrant are involved that further work produced by any employees scarcity will fall on the shoulders of remaining workers.
The establishment has come below public strain not too long ago. In 2024, pro-Palestinian protests focused the museum, demanding that management disclose any investments associated to Israel, then divest. In June of that yr, protestors hung a banner calling Pasternak a “white-supremacist Zionist” on the entrance to her residence constructing, smeared crimson paint on the door and equally focused the properties of two different museum leaders. (Three folks had been subsequently charged with hate crimes for the act.)
In response to a request for touch upon the rally, a Brooklyn Museum spokesperson stated: “We respect the rights of our union-represented workers to organise and rally. We stay in energetic negotiation with union management, in accordance with our contracts, and are dedicated to working with the members of UAW Native 2110 and DC 37 Native 1502 throughout this era.”
The Committee on Civil Service and Labor will host a listening to analyzing the layoffs on Friday (28 February) at 10am. Museum employees plan to talk there, and the listening to is open to the general public. Union members encourage the general public to contact Pasternak and demand the layoffs be cancelled.
“That is about standing in solidarity to combat these layoffs,” says Liz St George, one of many affected employees and the union chair for Native 2110. “The museum goes to must get the cash from some other place, not from its employees, who’re the center and soul of this establishment.”
