Amid plans to maneuver ahead with mass layoffs on the Brooklyn Museum, members of the establishment’s two unions rallied exterior the primary 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 staff—gathered to make their issues recognized to the general public and to museum management. Staff represented by the unions vary from clerical staff, assistants, educators, curators, conservators, guards and retail staff to technicians.
Chants of “What’s disgusting? Union busting!” might be heard all alongside Japanese Parkway. Folks from different establishments, together with the Whitney Museum of American Artwork, have been current to help their colleagues. Passersby joined in by honking and shouting: “Brooklyn is a union city!” Inside half an hour, the group grew to at the least 100 as folks stepped as much as the bullhorn to offer speeches.
Based on 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 price range deficit of practically $10m as the rationale for slicing important employees, programming and scaling again exhibitions. On 7 February, Anne Pasternak, the museum’s director, posted an announcement saying, partly: “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 steadiness out and spoke about how cultural staff can not proceed to beg for funding yr after yr. Brannan equally shared that he and his colleagues didn’t battle so onerous to reverse price range cuts to cultural establishments final yr simply to make method for workers reductions. “We have to see if we will discover some financial savings somewhere else. Shedding staff ought to by no means be on the desk,” Brannan stated.
Brooklyn’s borough president, Antonio Reynoso, speaks on the protest Photograph: Elly Belle
Of the practically 50 workers set to be minimize, 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 is just not doing what they suppose they’re,” Souffrant says. “They’re speaking about fairness and variety, however on the finish of the day, they have been spending lavishly, figuring out 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 an alternative of layoffs again in 2016, and that it will be potential to stave off layoffs once more, if museum management have been bargaining in good religion—which union members say is just not 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 may be 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 price range, which stands at $64m for the 2025 fiscal yr. Greater than $1m went to Pasternak’s wage in 2023, in line with publicly out there filings. Based on 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 underneath 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 condo constructing, smeared crimson paint on the door and equally focused the houses of two different museum leaders. (Three folks have 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 inspecting the layoffs on Friday (28 February) at 10am. Museum staff 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 battle these layoffs,” says Liz St George, one of many affected staff and the union chair for Native 2110. “The museum goes to need to get the cash from some place else, not from its staff, who’re the guts and soul of this establishment.”
