Unionized employees at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Mass. went on strike indefinitely beginning on March 6, following the museum’s refusal to meet demands for increased wages. Union members voted 97 percent in favor of the strike.
The union, which is part of the Local 2110 unit of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, is demanding an $18.25 minimum hourly wage for all workers currently paid below this figure and a 4.5-percent wage increase for all others. The union said in a statement that these demands were prompted by an increase in the cost of living in the region.
Full-time employees at the museum currently earn an average of $43,600 a year, with the minimum hourly wage set at $16.25, according to the union. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that a single adult with no dependents must make approximately $48,000 per year to affordably live in Berkshire County.
The union chapter was formed by employees in April 2021 to negotiate for higher wages and increased benefits. Similar conflicts over wage negotiations have previously prompted a walk out in December 2023 and a one-day strike in August 2022. The current round of bargaining for a wage increase with MASS MoCA management began last October. Chelsea Farrell, an organizer for Local 2110 UAW, described the process as “painfully slow and fairly tense” and said that the move to strike indefinitely came after management’s proposals did not meet the union’s demands.
The museum’s final offer was a 3.5-percent increase in wages with a $17.25 hourly minimum, which would cost about $150,000 less than the union’s plan, according to the union’s website. “It’s not an unbridgeable gap,” Farrell said of the proposals. As of March 11, the union had not heard from museum management about further negotiations, she said.
According to MASS MoCA Director of Communications Jennifer Falk, MASS MoCA management is still offering strikers the most recent proposed increase in wages.
“Despite challenging financial realities, our minimum wage proposal is higher than any state-mandated minimum wage across the country,” Falk wrote to the Record. “Our operational capacity is still coming out of the economic upheaval of the pandemic, and we too experience the impacts of inflation.”
According to its website, the museum is remaining open, though two exhibits have been closed as a result of the strike.
“We are extremely disappointed that the United Auto Workers union has decided to reject our wage increase offer by taking action against MASS MoCA in the form of an indefinite strike,” MASS MoCA Director Kristy Edmunds wrote in a statement on the museum’s website. “At this post-pandemic juncture, we are building a future of financial resilience — including significant investments in our people — and cannot agree to contract terms that will diminish our ability to do so holistically.”
“MASS MoCA continues to bargain in good faith and are hopeful to settle these negotiations in the near future,” Falk wrote. Massachusetts senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey have both written on Twitter in support of the union, and members have been picketing outside MASS MoCA’s campus daily since the strike began.
“Statements about how much you care about the staff and how much you care about the institution fall a little flat on the picket line,” Farrell said. “We need actual action.”
Farrell said that union members are hoping the strike resolves quickly, so they can return to work, but they are not planning to back down. “We are prepared for the long haul,” Farrell said. “We were staggering shifts [on the picket line] to make sure people get breaks, make sure people get time off, make sure people take care of themselves, because we are prepared to be out here for as long as it takes.”
