Met Museum Staff Seek Union Election Amid Pay and Job Security Concerns

Unionization Efforts Underway at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

New York, NY— This morning, nearly a thousand employees of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, including both full-time and part-time staff, have initiated a formal request for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. Represented by Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers (UAW), the employees are advocating for unionization.

The workers' call for unionizing emerges from longstanding issues such as pay disparities, insufficient job security, and increasing workloads. Concerns about these matters were amplified during the pandemic, leading to initial discussions among staff in 2020. By 2022, the group sought the support of UAW Local 2110, an organization renowned for unionizing staff at prominent cultural institutions like the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Rebecca Capua, a Conservator with a 16-year tenure at the Met, stated, “The union effort was started during the pandemic by a group of long-time staff who know the Met extremely well and have been through multiple crises where we have lost staff and benefits. We want our jobs at the Met to be viable long term careers — for ourselves and for those who come after us.”

Alison Clark, a Collections Manager who has been with the institution for nearly 20 years, added, “The Met is an amazing place. I’ve worked here almost 20 years, and love it. However, the Museum often makes decisions without considering or consulting staff, such as changes to our Work from Home policy and erosion of our health and other benefits. Right now, we’re contending with several large scale capital projects that displace people and create a lot of additional work for the staff. Unionizing is the only way for us to have a strong collective voice to address concerns with the Museum.”

Data Analyst Tiffany Camusci, who joined the Met in 2023, noted that her involvement in the union drive has fostered greater unity among coworkers across various departments. She remarked, “As a newer employee, I got involved because a union will empower us to address our pay and our opportunities for career advancement at the Met. It’s rewarding to know that so many of my colleagues share similar concerns and want to address our workplace needs collectively.”

In recent years, many museum workers nationwide have turned to unionization. Institutions such as the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the New Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum have seen their employees organize with UAW Local 2110. Issues akin to those at the Met, including inadequate salaries, lack of job security, and limited transparency regarding institutional decisions, have been major drivers of these efforts. The economic challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic have further exposed vulnerabilities in non-unionized environments, motivating employees to seek stronger collective representation.