Peace at two New York museums: workers’ unions reach tentative agreements with the Brooklyn Museum and the American Folk Art Museum

Unionised workers at the Brooklyn Museum and the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) in New York have reached tentative agreements with the management of their institutions, averting for now an escalation towards a strike, as Hyperallergic reports.

Both unions announced the agreements on their official Instagram pages. Ratification votes begin on 29 September, while the terms of the proposals have not yet been made public. A union representative did not immediately respond to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.

The agreements come two weeks after workers at both museums voted together with the Whitney Museum union to authorise a strike, amid stalled contract negotiations. Unlike these two museums, which reached agreements without setting a strike date, the Whitney union has set its strike deadline for 5 October.

All three unions are organised under the umbrella of UAW Local 2110, which represents workers at many cultural institutions in New York and beyond. At the three museums, the unions have sought a minimum wage of around $71,000 a year for full-time employees — a figure that New York City has calculated as the minimum a single adult without children needs to live sustainably in the city.

The move follows years of mobilisation: Brooklyn Museum workers also protested in 2023, ahead of the Brooklyn Artists Ball — a sign that tensions with the museum’s management are nothing new.