Members of the Area Museum’s labor union and their supporters rallied exterior the pure historical past museum on Wednesday to protest low wages and the gradual progress of contract negotiations with administration after practically 1 1/2 years.
About 100 folks picketed exterior the museum carrying indicators that learn “Truthful Contract Now,” whereas chanting slogans similar to “Area Museum negotiate!” and “You need to pay your employees extra!”
Native leaders joined the rally, together with Anthony Quezada, a Cook dinner County commissioner; Alma Anaya, chair of the Cook dinner County Labor Committee; Don Villar, Chicago Federation of Labor’s secretary-treasurer; and state Sen. Lakesia Collins.
Quezada urged museum leaders to “do the precise factor. Sit down on the negotiating desk.” He known as claims that Area’s administration used “worry and intimidation” to quash union activism “shameful.”
Anaya mentioned she got here to the rally to “inform administration that we assist the wages, respect and dignity that you simply’re asking for.”
Villar advised union members, “We’re taking our children right here to indicate off what you do. So that you can battle to make ends meet, that ain’t proper.”
Throughout the rally, museum guests with kids in tow squeezed between picketers to get to the Area’s entrance.
Area Museum Staff United/AFSCME, the union representing staff, mentioned members’ pay has lagged inflation by 17% during the last 5 years.
“Consequently, they battle to avoid wasting, present for his or her youngsters and pay their payments, typically taking second jobs, residing with roommates or counting on relations for assist,” the union mentioned Wednesday in a information launch.
On the rally, Emma Turner-Trujillo, assistant registrar in anthropology at Area, mentioned, “I can’t survive on my wage.” She presently has a second job to complement her annual wage of $43,000, whereas the museum’s CEO makes $826,000 a 12 months, Turner-Trujillo mentioned. She known as administration’s provide to lift pay by 3% throughout negotiations “insulting and belittling.”
Area Museum CEO Julian Siggers made greater than $826,000 in 2023, based on tax filings.
Turner-Trujillo added that along with her wage she gained’t be capable of repay debt, purchase a house or save for retirement. “There is no such thing as a museum with out us, and we deserve a residing wage. They will afford it,” she mentioned, referring to Area’s administration.
Adrienne Stroup, a collections assistant in geology, has labored on the Area for 12 years. She mentioned her job “is a dream come true,” but employees like her are “nonetheless scraping by” whereas administration drags out the negotiations.
“They’re out of contact with the fact of residing in an costly metropolis like Chicago,” Stroup mentioned on the rally.
A spokesperson for the Area Museum mentioned it has been assembly commonly with the union’s bargaining group to barter their first contract. They’ve reached “a number of tentative agreements on the vast majority of the union’s proposals, together with tentative agreements on all non-economic articles and several other tentative agreements on financial articles in the previous couple of weeks,” based on an emailed assertion. The museum mentioned it has commonly up to date workers after every bargaining session.
Area’s assertion mentioned: “We’ve got simply three substantive proposals open, together with the length of the contract. Wages is among the open objects. The minimal wage that the museum presently has on the desk for negotiation is already larger than what was agreed upon in different AFSCME contracts at two different native museums. Whereas we do have a niche to bridge concerning wage will increase, that’s due partly to FMWU’s proposal for a 19% enhance in wages within the first 12 months, together with a bonus that would convey that enhance to greater than 25% in a single 12 months. That isn’t sustainable for the Museum. We are going to proceed to barter in good religion and count on the identical from AFSCME.”
In March 2023, Area employees voted to unionize with AFSCME’s Council 31. Bargaining with administration began in October 2023.
They’re a part of a wave of staff unionizing on the metropolis’s venerable cultural establishments, such because the Artwork Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Up to date Artwork and the Newberry Library.
Almost 300 Area staff are union members. Leaders of its organizing drive mentioned the vote got here regardless of an aggressive anti-union marketing campaign from administration.
In January, the union held a rally and mentioned the Area “illegally retaliated” in opposition to two former staff by not renewing their contracts in December. Administration broke labor legal guidelines and “interfered with protected exercise,” based on a cost filed by AFSCME with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board.
