Amid a Nationwide Push for Museum Workers’ Rights, the Staff of LA MOCA Is Unionizing

Staff at the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles have become the latest cultural
workers to seek union status. Employees have called on the art
museum’s senior management to voluntarily recognize their right to
collectively negotiate new and improved contracts. But it may not
happen without a fight. 

The announcement on
Friday, November 22,
sees the LA institution joining a growing number of museums across
the US where workers are pushing hard to unionize in order to
improve working conditions, negotiate wages, and obtain better job
security.

More than 50 MOCA employees
called on the institution to recognize their union with the
American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees,
according to a statement from the organization, which already
represents several groups of museum employees, including those at
New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the
American Museum of Natural History. The AFSCME has also filed
a petition for recognition with the National Labor Relations
Board. 

MOCA worker Ryan Lentini said
that the push to unionize was “about coming together in solidarity as artists,
craftspeople, and workers with the hopes of making MOCA a more
democratic and humane workplace.” Lentini added that it was also
about fighting for “a sea change” in how museums operate across the
US. 

But the Los Angeles museum’s
management seems resistant to the idea. In a statement provided to
press, a representative for the museum
said: “While we respect
the right of employees to decide whether or not they wish to be
represented by a union, we do not believe that this union is in the
best interest of our employees or the museum.” Artnet News reached
out to the museum for further comment but did not hear back by
press time.

The museum announced last week
that it would be offering free admission beginning January 11,
2020, thanks to a $10 million gift from the philanthropist and
board president Carolyn Clark Powers. Museum director Klaus
Biesenbach said in a statement that free entry “is essential for
MOCA to be an active, civic-minded institution, open and inviting
to our communities.”

Some members of staff think its
civic-mindedness should include labor relations, too. “If MOCA is
serious about its stated goal of entering a new chapter in its
history, we believe that management needs to work with us to turn
the page on its labor practices of the recent past, and to assure
that staff are given fair wages, and stable working conditions,”
Lentini said in a statement. 

The staff members launched their quest to unionize with a march
on director Biesenbach’s office on Friday.

The employees’ move comes just
weeks after former staff at LA’s Marciano Art
Foundation also moved to unionize. The private institution abruptly
announced plans to shutter, ostensibly due to “low
attendance.” Labor
organizers filed a
complaint against the
foundation over the timing of the closure, which has been described
as a lock out. Ex-staffers have threatened to mount
a Black Friday protest against its founders, the Marciano brothers,
who own the fashion label Guess, targeting its stores
nationwide.

This year, unions have been
formed at New York’s New Museum, the Tenement Museum, and the
Guggenheim, as well as at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. It has
been more difficult for other West Coast museums, however, and the
only major Los Angeles museum that has successfully formed a union
remains the Museum of Tolerance. Union organizer Lylwyn Esangga, tells the
Los Angeles
Times that the AFSCME is also in discussions with
other museums in LA and San Diego.

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the Staff of LA MOCA Is Unionizing appeared first on artnet
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