Workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art authorize a strike

Unionized workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in talks since October of 2020 on their first labor contract with museum management, voted Tuesday night to authorize a strike should leaders deem it necessary.

While the vote gives union leaders the OK to call a strike, it does not mean that a work stoppage is necessarily imminent or inevitable.

Union leaders, who filed an unfair labor practices grievance with the National Labor Relations Board last week, said that the strike meeting was attended by most of the roughly 165 workers in the union, and the authorization vote was passed overwhelmingly, with only one abstention.

“They’re rehiring for positions that have been traditionally and historically full-time, permanent positions and rehiring them as temporary or term positions.”

Adam Rizzo, president of the PMA union, affiliated with AFSCME District Council Local 47, attributed the strong strike sentiment to the grievance charges filed with the NLRB. The charges, he said, “lit a fire” under people over the “type of bargaining that the museum is doing and the type of behavior they’re engaged in both at the bargaining table and away from it.”

Rizzo said the union filed grievances over eight instances of allegedly improper actions by the museum.

“The big-picture stuff was focused on the museum’s recent practice, I’d say over the past six months, in starting to rehire folks,” he said. “They’re rehiring for positions that have been traditionally and historically full-time, permanent positions and rehiring them as temporary or term positions.”

In 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, the museum laid off about 85 employees and accepted “voluntary separation agreements” from about 40 additional employees — nearly a quarter of the museum staff.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia Museum of Art slashes staff as pandemic takes its toll

Rizzo said that a labor complaint was also filed over what he termed “the museum’s misrepresentation of what is happening at bargaining” and management’s “failure to respond to information requests, so that we can have the information we need to make proposals and the like.”

A museum spokesperson said that, since the departure of former director and president Timothy Rub at the beginning of the year, negotiations have largely been overseen by “a team” and the museum’s lawyers at the Philadelphia firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.

Alexandra “Sasha” Suda, 41, named in June as the museum’s next director and president, will take up her new position on Sept. 21. She has been the director of the National Gallery of Canada, a union shop.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia Museum of Art names new director: Sasha Suda, director of the National Gallery of Canada

Rizzo said union membership was also dismayed by the lack of headway made over the museum’s employee economic package.

“Compared to peer institutions with similar budget size, we are lagging far, far behind,” Rizzo said. “It’s stark, the differences.”

“The museum was disappointed to learn of the union’s vote to authorize a strike,” a museum spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday, contending that “the museum has been bargaining in good faith with the union, and we remain committed to working toward a fair and appropriate collective bargaining agreement.”

The spokesperson said that management had “reached tentative agreements with the union on more than 25 substantive issues.” Talks are scheduled for next week, the spokesperson said.