These folk want a fair contract.
Workers at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City joined three dozen UAW Local 2110 organizers to picket the museum’s annual gala at the Mandarin Oriental in Columbus Circle on Wednesday night, May 6, demanding higher wages and better benefits.
Union members marched in front of the Upper West Side luxury hotel for two hours, holding signs that read, “For Folk’s Sake” and “Self Taught, Not Self Funded” while chanting, “What’s disgusting? Union busting! What’s outrageous? Poverty wages!”
Staffers say they were forced to take action after negotiations for a new contract remained stalled for nearly two years.
“The museum can raise all the money it wants, but if it doesn’t pay its workers fairly, then the museum can’t function well,” Eve Erickson, the museum’s development associate for institutional giving, told Hyperallergic. “There’s no art without the museum staff.”
Workers have been bargaining with museum executives for higher minimum wages and benefits since shortly after they voted to join the UAW Local 2110 in June 2024.
Frontline workers at the Columbus Avenue institution, who greet visitors, run the gift shop, and maintain the building, currently earn $19 per hour or $58,686 per year, about $12,000 below the living wage in New York City as calculated by MIT. Maintenance workers earn a similar rate at nearby art museums, including MoMA PS1, whose staff demonstrated for higher wages two years ago. (The American Folk Art museum’s CEO Jason Busch earned $321,882 in compensation during the 2024 fiscal year, according to the museum’s tax filings.)
In October 2024, American Folk Art Museum union reps requested that their employers grant a three-year contract and increase wages for these workers to $30 per hour by the end of the third year. But museum leaders only offered to raise wages to $21.50 per hour, and would not guarantee existing benefits, including health care and hybrid schedules, an outcome the union’s bargaining unit deemed unacceptable.
Negotiations dragged on as the museum closed its 2 Lincoln Square building last fall for a six-month renovation funded by the building’s owner, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the meantime, officials eliminated several unionized positions and outsourced the work to consultants and contractors, union reps said.
“The whole negotiations have been marked by antagonistic responses from the employer and bad-faith bargaining,” said Maida Rosenstein, director of organizing at Local 2110 UAW.
Staffers grew frustrated with the delays and high turnover. They distributed leaflets ahead of the museum’s reopening on April 9, celebrating its new exhibition, Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists, which features 90 works from the early 20th century through the present day. Last night, they rallied in front of the museum’s fundraiser, which was expected to draw 250 guests and raise several hundred thousand dollars, according to museum workers.
Museum officials would not reveal how much money the gala raised or say when they might complete negotiations.
“We respect our employees’ decision to unionize and are committed to working in good faith toward a fair and mutually beneficial contract,” a museum spokesperson said in a statement.
The protest was unusually intimate. Several trustees hugged unionized museum staff and took flyers and UAW buttons before they went inside the hotel. Artist vanessa german, one of the honorees at the Folk Art Museum gala, took five buttons, while other donors said they supported the demonstration.
Jean Seestadt, a former events manager at the museum who now works for the UAW, said she hoped the museum finalizes a new contract with higher wages soon.
“I love the museum. I hope they make a lot of money tonight so they can pay their workers more,” she said.
