After nearly three weeks of picketing and eight bargaining sessions, 120 workers at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) reached a new wage agreement with the museum yesterday, March 26. Within 30 days, workers unionized with UAW Local 2110 will win. $18 hourly minimum wage and collect The annual salary increases of 3.5% are retroactive until January 1, 2024.
In addition, the union also guaranteed extra pay for time and a half for days of more than 10 hours; the standard Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday pay; Extra pay for New Year’s Day, Independence Day and Labor Day; and a final 12.1% salary increase for the second year of the contract agreement.
In a statement shared with him HyperallergicMASS MoCA director Kristy Edmunds described the two sides as “genuinely collaborative and productive” at the latest negotiation meeting last Sunday, March 24. “We ensured that everyone will move forward, not backward, in what will be remembered as a landmark moment. MASS MoCA history,” he added.
The union ratified the first contract with the museum in December 2022, guaranteeing A clause to renegotiate wages by October 2023, but a strike deadline of March 6 this year was set after the bargaining committee and the museum failed to reach an agreement. At the time, more than half of the union’s members were making $16.25 an hour (the hourly wage floor of the 2022 contract), bringing in a full-time annual salary. salary to $43,600 – about a thousand dollars below the annual expenses of a single childless adult in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.
Before the strike earlier this month, the union was seeking a new wage floor of $18.25 with a 4.5% annual increase, while the museum had settled for a general wage increase of $17.25 an hour and 3.5%, which management called “its” which he described The highest offer to date at the bargaining table,” adding that the figure was still above the $15 minimum wage in Massachusetts.
The strike began as planned on March 6 and lasted for 19 days until the bargaining committee and the museum agreed on the final details, last Sunday, March 24. The union voted yesterday to confirm the proposal and the workers were to return to work today. March 27
The union did not immediately respond Hyperallergicrequest for comment.
In its press release, it said the museum would be closed on Wednesdays in April while it manages financial risks at this time, but noted that the six-day schedule would return in May.
