Employees at Dia Artwork Basis voted to formally unionize with Native UAW 2110 in a landslide September 13 election: 101 staff voted “sure” and solely six workers voted in opposition.
Yesterday’s victory got here almost two months after Dia workers petitioned to unionize in July, citing low wages and a scarcity of job safety and recognition. Now, the newly unionized staff will elect their negotiating committee, conduct a survey to find out their bargaining priorities, and start negotiating a contract with Dia, a course of that takes a median of 13 months.
“Dia respects our workers’s determination to unionize and we sit up for working constructively and overtly with Native 2110 transferring ahead,” a Dia spokesperson informed Hyperallergic.
As members of Native UAW 2110, Dia workers be a part of unionized staff at a bunch of different cultural establishments, together with New York Metropolis’s Museum of Trendy Artwork (MoMA), the New Museum, the Bronx Museum of Artwork, and the Tenement Museum.
The almost 50-year-old Dia Artwork Basis shows site-specific installations, curated exhibitions, and boasts a set of largely sculptural works from the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s. The museum has outposts in Utah, New Mexico, and Germany, however its largest location is within the upstate city of Beacon, New York. The just lately unionized workers work in Beacon in addition to the muse’s areas in New Mexico, Manhattan, and Bridgehampton, Lengthy Island.
Dia staff’ election victory comes as unionization efforts proceed to brush museums throughout the nation. Current labor wins embrace decisive votes on the Baltimore Museum of Artwork and New York’s Jewish Museum, and within the final month, staff on the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork and Massachusetts’s MASS MoCA approved strikes protesting “lowball” wages and unfair labor practices.
