Over 150 people rallied outside the Brooklyn Museum today, March 6, in the second protest against sweeping layoffs at the institution set to go into effect this Sunday. Forty-seven full- and part-time employees across departments are expected to lose their jobs as part of the museum’s widely criticized cost-saving plan to address a $10 million budget deficit, including six non-unionized workers.
Members of the two unions representing workers at the museum, UAW Local 2110 and DC 37 Local 1502, assembled on the institution’s concrete steps at noon today.
“We should be at the table enjoying lunch, but the museum put us out here because they created a deficit and they want to balance that deficit on the back of our unions,” Local 1502 President Wilson Souffrant told the crowd.
Unions at the museum first learned of the impending cuts in early February, just three days before Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternak confirmed the layoffs in an all-staff meeting. That week, union representatives filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, arguing that the museum failed to provide a 30-day negotiating period as stipulated by their contracts.
The Brooklyn Museum has told Hyperallergic that it is indeed complying with the 30-day notice, by making the layoffs effective March 9 and by continuing to bargain with regard to severance packages and exact positions to be cut.
But some workers say they’ve only received verbal notices informing them of the layoffs in February and have not had updates since.
“It’s been about four weeks since they announced this layoff, and I personally have not gotten any sort of written notice that I have been laid off, so no, they are not in compliance at all,” Michael Galardi, an assistant objects conservator who’s worked at the museum for the last four years, told Hyperallergic at the rally.
A museum spokesperson said in a statement that “notification was given to both unions on February 7 and we have been in active negotiations on the terms of the reductions since that date.”
As the deadline for final cuts approaches, union members and workers say there’s still time for the museum to reverse the layoffs altogether.
“I really hope so, because I love working here,” Galardi continued. “We’re all here because we’re passionate about working here. We don’t want to see this place lose the people that really are essential to the function of it.”
The Brooklyn Museum spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the institution “explored all realistic options for financial relief before turning to layoffs and is actively making adjustments across the whole of the institution to right-size its budget.”
“No one wants to eliminate jobs, but the Museum must operate within its funding. Since February 7, in accordance with our union contracts, we have been actively engaged in negotiating the terms of reductions,” the statement said.
In another recent protest, and during a special oversight hearing about the layoffs at City Hall last week, union reps have drawn parallels between the shrinking of federal agencies under President Trump and the “culture of austerity” being practiced by institutions, in the words of UAW Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla today.
“This moment should be a beacon of hope and change while Elon Musk and his cronies in Washington are trying to lay off all the workers that they can,” Mancilla said in an address during today’s rally. “So why in the world are we letting our institutions do the same thing to us?”
The Guggenheim Museum also announced layoffs last Friday, February 28, impacting 20 workers effective immediately. The possibility of staff cuts at the Guggenheim was discussed hours earlier at the City Hall oversight hearing, where unions warned of an impending wave of cuts across organizations.
Today, supporters from various cultural institutions across New York City, many of them members of DC 37 or UAW, came out to show solidarity for Brooklyn Museum employees. Among them were nearby Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) staffers Leah Golubchick and Lisa Goldstein, who used their lunch break to attend the rally.
“I was trained as a museum educator, and my very first internship was at the Brooklyn Museum,” said Golubchick, now a youth and family services coordinator at BPL. “We’re here to support the people who are on the front lines and making the museum an amazing place.”
Staff Writer Isa Farfan contributed reporting.
