Daily News | ‘We won the strike’: Art museum staffers ratify their first contract and look forward to returning to work
overwhelmingly approved their first contract Sunday evening and prepared to return to their jobs Monday morning, concluding a historic 19-day walkout.
The PMA Union, an affiliate of AFSCME DC47, had been negotiating a deal with museum management for two years.to virtually all that the union wanted, approving a 14% pay hike over three years , an increase in the minimum hourly wage from $15 to $16.75, “longevity” pay increases that would grant workers an additional $500 for every five years of employment, four weeks of paid parental leave, and help with the high cost of health insurance.
The day of the walkout, Sasha Suda, former director of the National Gallery of Canada, a unionized organization, arrived to take over as director and CEO. The museum announced that she would not be involved in negotiations, mystifying observers.Chris Havlish Part of the reason for sluggish negotiations, said one source who was not authorized to comment on the negotiations and asked to not be identified, is that museum leadership “was under the impression that the employees would not strike and if they did, they couldn’t ‘hold the strike.’”Said the source: “They were sorely mistaken.”
Several sources said Mayor Jim Kenney; Rich Lazer, deputy mayor for labor; and attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro were among those who played a role in moving negotiations along., which opens to the public on Oct. 20. VIP and member previews were scheduled for this past weekend.
Joseph Hu, a photographer for the museum, said that much of the “healing” will likely be the result of the presence of the union contract itself.
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