Art Work

DANIEL B. SCHNEIDER ON THE MOMA STRIKE

AS THIS ISSUE OF ARTFORUM goes to press, the strike at the Museum of Modern Art enters its fourth month, with negotiations at a virtual standstill, accusations of duplicity and bad faith issuing from all sides, and little hope that a settlement will be reached before the museum begins its $650 million expansion next year.

A giant inflatable rat, putative symbol of no-holdsbarred union vigilance, has been positioned outside the museum's entrance. A dozen or so weedy, hiplooking picketers, members of the museum's Professional and Administrative Staff Association, toot whistles, slap drums, and urge visitors to go to the Whitney or the Guggenheim instead. "We're out here to demonstrate our resolve, though from the museum's point of view, we literally can't afford to take a principled stand," said Michael Cinquina, a buyer for the museum bookstore. "It's contemptible of the museum to ignore the fact that 150 of their people have been on the sidewalk every day."

The strikers include historically nonunionized professionals like archivists, conservators, and assistant curators, as well as librarians, editors, writers, secretaries, photographers, and the retail staff of the bookstore and design shop. Formed in 1971, the patchwork white-collar union--known by the unfortunate acronym PASTA--is one of the few of its kind in the country, representing 250 of the museum's 650 employees; its members are, on average, the lowest paid of the museum's six unions.

On the surface, the strike encompasses a broad range of bread-and-butter issues, including salaries, health-care benefits, union participation, and job security after the museum closes its Manhattan galleries for the three-year expansion. The negotiating atmosphere soured considerably after the staff association's contract expired last October. Though disputes between PASTA and management have become acrimonious in the past, many on both sides claim they were caught off guard when the negotiating committee voted to strike. "Was I surprised?" said Glenn D. Lowry, director of the museum since 1995. "Yes."

Now, exasperated by the museum's apparent intransigence, many PASTA members on both sides of the picket line wonder aloud if Lowry is simply trying to cripple the union before the museum closes and new construction begins. "The museum is punishing us for behaving like a union instead of an association," said Cinquina, who has served on PASTA's negotiating committee for nine years.

According to longtime members, the staff association has traditionally been a free-spirited, highly independent group. PASTA first went on strike for eight weeks in 1973, unsuccessfully seeking a staff seat on the board of trustees and the inclusion of full curators in the bargaining unit. Though ties between PASTA and its brawnier affiliate, Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers, have strengthened in recent years, only about 170 PASTA workers are dues-paying members, and of these only 115 voted to strike in April.

Since then, the bitterness and inflexibility shown by both management and the union have surprised observers, and there is a broad sense that the river of mistrust and personal enmity has jumped its banks. A federal mediator has not called the two sides together for face-to-face talks since the strike began, and the museum has watched a bad situation dramatically worsen.

The picket line works in three daily shifts, drawn from a pool that has withered to under 125. Museum attendance is down only slightly, if at all. But while management has claimed that over half of PASTA's members have crossed the picket line, only around fifty of those eligible for union support have actually refused to strike or returned to work. "I think it's going fine. The people on strike are more committed than ever before," said Maida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110.

Charles Silver, an assistant curator in the film department and an original PASTA member, says he crossed the picket line because Local 2110 distorted management's position and ignored the worker's interests. "I'm committed to the concept of the union, and to this particular union, but there are realities and common sense involved, and all that's gone out the window," said Silver, who was defeated in a number of recent PASTA elections. "These [UAW] people strike. It's what they do. They care about themselves. They care nothing about the museum workers."

Many of those who have crossed the line are curators, who constitute the staff association's priestly class. Their absence is notable because they are among PASTA'S best-educated and highest-paid members, and the exhibitions they organize are, in effect, the museum's only product. Returning workers, it should be noted, receive the museum's proposed wage increase, along with a new dental plan and pension package.

Museum representatives continue to portray the union leadership as the real impediment to any resolution. As evidence, they have trumpeted the union's demand that all new employees join the union or, if they choose not to join, be required to pay union dues, creating what is known as an agency shop. "I don't believe there are any issues of substance or consequence, outside of the union demand [for an agency shop], that cannot be resolved. Quickly," said Lowry. Robert Batterman, the museum's chief negotiator, was even more explicit. "The union leadership made it clear to me months before the strike began-indeed, before the negotiations began-that an agency shop was going to be the sine qua non for a settlement," he said. "I made it clear that this was an issue of high principle to the museum, that we had a tradition of twenty-nine years with an open shop, and that we would not be agreeing to this demand."