Union and Community at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Editor’s Note
For this article, New Labor Forum’s Working-Class Voices columnist Kressent Pottenger interviewed two workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) who are members of the Local 397 of the American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 47. Matt Carrieri works in conservation; Jenna Staffieri is an art handler. Both are Members at Large, who serve on the Executive Board of Local 397 and on multiple bargaining committees. PMA workers voted to form a union in July 2020. On September 26, 2022—after two years of negotiations for a fair contract—they went on strike for nineteen days. They ratified their first contract on October 16, 2022.
Matt Carrieri: I have worked part time in conservation at the PMA since 2017. Our team is called Gallery Maintenance. I always wanted to work in a museum. It is cool to be up close with the artwork every day. We go out in the galleries daily and dust all the artwork: sculptures, the frames of paintings. We plug [repair] the plexiglass and vitrines. We clean and keep track of the art; a chipped frame, sculptures breaking or degrading in some way caused by time, dust, or visitors. If a piece is breaking down, we report this to the head conservators and advise whether they need to fix something or do more detailed work. We are the eyes and ears of the galleries. The PMA owns the Rodin Museum, and we also work there every two weeks. Less frequently, we have some historical houses in the park system that we clean.
I have a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Most people in this position have at least a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) or an MFA. A background in the arts is what gets you in the door, and it is mostly on-the-job training. Many have gone from this job to graduate school for conservation or take other conservation jobs. There are around thirty people in my department. We work in offices or in a separate area from the conservation labs. My team is myself, three staff members, and our supervisor. Gallery maintenance is in the Department of Conservation. We have conservation labs, where the head conservators work on painting or framing conservation. We have an objects conservator for furniture, and a separate lab for sculpture. There are different labs for each of those different groupings. We have fellows in and out on two three-year fellowships. There is a main building with the Rocky steps—the scene from that film
that everyone thinks of as the PMA—and the separate Perelman building, which has a lot of executive offices, storage, gallery space, and painting labs.
Jenna Staffieri: I am an art handler in the Installations and Packing Department. I started in fall of 2022, a few weeks before our strike. My title is installation technician. I went to the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Arts and culture is a field that I have always been interested in. I worked for an art-framing studio in New York; then for three years, at a private art-shipping company before I started at the PMA. I got interested in the organizing happening at PMA. That was an impetus to try to work there actually. In my job, I install the artwork: I take it down when it is being rotated and spend most of my time in the woodshop, making custom crates for art that goes out on loan. There is an ecosystem among museums where they loan works between other cultural institutions. I spend most of my time working on that side of things. Making sure that work travels safely. It is very hands-on, manual labor, and very physical. My department has fifteen art handlers, a mount-maker, and a manager for the art department. The PMA is one of the larger art museums in the United States. Bigger than your average city museum, so we have a big team. It is very white, and very male.
. . . [D]uring Covid . . . we . . . stayed closed from March until July. If you were making over a certain amount, you took a pay cut.
We convene daily in the installations office, where we each have a desk, and discuss what’s going to happen that day. I am usually on the packing or the installation side of things. Something we want to do before the public is there by 10 am. After we convene upstairs in the office, I typically go down to the basement to the shop and start work. Either fabricating a new crate or retrofitting or reworking an existing crate to send something out on loan. We recently had a contemporary Korean art show. Most of the work was getting shipped internationally. Typically, when artwork gets sent to the museum, it is often sent by courier from the lending institution. You watch it being installed to make sure that it is being properly handled and also provide feedback or insight about the piece.
MC: I work 8:30 am-4:30 pm, Monday-Wednesday. The rest of the team works the opposite days. In terms of safety training, we had lift training and watched OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) videos. We have advocated for a pay structure at the bargaining table. The museum was not willing to provide it. We have hourly minimums and a minimum salary. If I wanted to move up in my position to be an actual conservator, I would have to go back to school for more training. Currently the hourly minimum pay in our collective bargaining agreement is $16.75 or $42,000 a year. I was making $12.75 when I started in 2017. Then they bumped us up to $15 an hour. Full-time employees have health insurance, paid vacation, and paid sick time. Part-time workers do not have health benefits. Regardless of being part time or full time, workers have some amount of paid sick days. We can contribute to a retirement package.
JS: When I got hired, the hourly rate was $19. Now it is approximately $22 an hour. I am hourly. Full time at the PMA is thirty-five hours a week, 8 am-4 pm. As for benefits, I have a retirement plan that is a matching 403(b) plan, paid time off, vacation, and personal days in my bank of paid time off. It goes up a bit with seniority. Our overtime depends on the timeline for exhibitions. During bigger installations or collection shows, unexpected problems come up—you start drilling holes, and it might not line up how you are expecting. Or the curator decides to make last-minute changes. We recently had a piece going out in a crate which was a very labor-intensive build.
MC: In March of 2020—during Covid—we were notified the museum was shutting down for two weeks to slow the spread of Covid-19. We stayed closed from March until July. If you were making over a certain amount, you took a pay cut. Then they announced you could either stay on until the museum re-opened or voluntarily resign. If you did that, you would get two weeks of pay for every year that you were there to help transition into finding another job. Our supervisor called us in July and said my department might get cut. He was taking that time to advocate for us with his boss. Everything was scary at the time. He called us at the end of the day and said, okay you guys are staying on. That was a relief. We got notified by human resources (HR) on a Wednesday to come back in on a Monday. They sent us a Covid-19 relief packet with information about the precautions they were taking, asking us to sign that we were ok with it. My job is on-site because I clean the work. Other people were working from home. Our supervisor advocated for us, and we got personal protective equipment (PPE). We shut down again in November 2020 until January 1, 2021. We did not get paid. I went on unemployment. They kept switching the schedule. Even when the museum was open to the public, we would work hours when there were no visitors.
. . . I started talking to people about organizing and learning more. It seemed like . . . a way to deal with issues I was having—as someone . . . feeling like I had very little control over my trajectory.
One of my coworkers talked to me before we shut down and said: We are thinking about joining a union; would you want to sign a union card? I did not know anything about a union at that point. She asked: What would you change about your job? I was thinking very small at the time. Cool with being paid a little more and paid time off. I signed the card. Then we shut down. The same coworker reached out later: How are you feeling about the union? I said I think it would be a good idea. The museum departments are very siloed. I was there two days a week. I worked with a couple of people who were working multiple jobs elsewhere, too. I did not see what was happening across departments: people were struggling with low pay and inadequate health benefits.
I was upset coming back to the museum during the pandemic and regarding how it was handled by HR. I have asthma and asked are they gonna be giving us the proper PPE? I did not know if I felt comfortable. They said, okay, if you do not want to come to work, get a note from a doctor. You just won’t get paid. Then come back whenever you feel you are ready. I felt like, “Are you kidding me?” Give me four-five days notice, and if I do not feel comfortable, I just do not get paid in the middle of a pandemic? I think that was the first time I was very personally affected by it. That was July, and then we voted. The union formed a health and safety committee. I got involved. We had PPE because of my supervisor advocating for us. Not the higher ups. It did not feel like I was being supported. I started going to the union meetings.
JS: We ultimately got a contract, and it has been a huge improvement. There is still room for more. We won paid parental leave. Before that, it just did not exist. We got a 50-percent reduction in the cost burden for health insurance for employees. We increased the minimum salary. I am on the Pay Equity Committee. The idea was conceptualized during contract negotiations because there was such an intense impasse and a lot of difficulty negotiating pay. A compromise was to create a committee with members from the union and management side to create a report on pay equity within the museum. There is a lack of pay transparency. I got interested in the labor movement from much of the popular media about unionizing efforts. I had friends who were attempting to unionize their workplaces. I was interested in the organizing before I worked at PMA. I didn’t really have any understanding of how unions functioned or their history in the United States or elsewhere. But as I started to work full time, I started talking to people about organizing and learning more. It seemed like it was a way to deal with issues I was having—as someone who was working a job and feeling like I had very little control over my trajectory. This feeling that I could work really hard and still not get what I was expecting—nor was there any path to rectify that or to try to make a case for myself. I was in a niche field of work, so the organizing happening at the PMA piqued my interest. By the time I applied for a job there, the workers had already won their union election and were negotiating for their first contract. I was thinking many people would apply for this position. It took me six months and four interviews to get hired for a job with a starting rate of less than $20 an hour. When I tell people, they think that is crazy.
I grew up in the Philadelphia area between Philly and Delaware County, so the PMA loomed large. In my life, it was a really important place to me. It still is. I was immediately, like, how do I sign my union card? Six weeks later, the strike happened, and we won. I just wanted to keep putting effort into organizing. I joined the member-led Social Committee. We plan social events for members. That was my first really structured involvement aside from the strike. I am on the executive board of our local as a Member at Large.
We had open bargaining, where you let members come and watch Zoom bargaining sessions. We wanted to be as transparent as we could.
MC: I am on two committees and have been a Member at Large since 2021. The Longevity Committee was formed because we were having an issue with our longevity agreement. We are doing outreach around that specifically. I am also on the Constitution Committee. The local gets a constitution: It’s like a skeleton constitution from the AFSCME International. You adapt it as you need, like the section on dues which are voted on by the local. We can change some stuff in our local constitution, but not if it goes against the international constitution. We are the first wall-to-wall museum union in the country. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York has had a union since the1960s, but different departments are unionized under different union locals. Our
local is visitor services, conservators, donor engagement, and curators. Everybody that is getting a paycheck from the museum is in the same union. We decided AFSCME would make the most sense as the union to represent us because they understood and had enough background in the museum field that they could support our needs. We had open bargaining, where you let members come and watch Zoom bargaining sessions. We wanted to be as transparent as we could. One of the issues people had with the museum structure is their opacity and how they made decisions that affected everybody. We did not want to recreate that in the union. People could actually come and see the way the museum and the lawyers treated us. I think that was good at getting people riled up. The best organizer is the boss. During bargaining, we had five demands: for the museum to contribute 95 percent instead of 90 percent to healthcare. A minimum of $16.75 an hour, and a minimum salary $52,000. We wanted a longevity agreement that would honor people’s time at the museum based on their anniversaries: five to ten or fifteen to twenty years at the institution. We wanted that added to their base pay. In lieu of these pay tiers—which we originally demanded—we got the museum to agree to this.
. . . [P]eople in the Philadelphia community recognize how important the PMA is to our city, and they really showed up for us when we were on strike.
We timed the strike around the big “Matisse in the 1930s” exhibition, which was to open in October 2022. Given the installation of the show, which had to be done in September, we knew that September would be a time that would be detrimental to the operation of the museum. The Matisse show was a traveling exhibition and created a time crunch for the PMA. That is the point of a strike. We were not going to give up our basic demands. We had huge support from the public and other union locals. We were good at using social media leading up to the strike. In April 2022, we had a rally and then again in June. AFSCME International had a convention. The union suggested we hold a rally there. They brought people from the convention center from all over the
country to support our rally. We did informational leafletting: this is what we are demanding, this is how the museum was responding. We had a QR code linked to our social media and a petition people could sign. Labor was present for us in Philadelphia as a city. So, once we got to the strike, we had so much support from the public.
JS: The PMA is a beacon of the city. It is an iconic building and often referenced in imagery about the city. Rocky, the one famous movie about Philadelphia, has Rocky Balboa running up the PMA steps. The statue outside the museum is an incredibly huge tourist attraction. I think the PMA has an incredible collection. We are so fortunate to have amazing staff that puts on community events. They do incredible programming, leading school tours so students can experience the collection. To the best of their ability—with what resources they are given by the institution—staff do all of this incredible work to make the PMA a community space. I think a lot of people in the Philadelphia community recognize how important the PMA is to our city, and they really showed up for us when we were on strike. I was ready to go on strike right off the bat, but it is scary: you’re not gonna go to work, you’re not gonna get paid. We were picketing for six hours a day. Your boss is coming in. It is really intimidating. Through all those big emotions, it was definitely one of the coolest things I have ever done in my life. One of the most rewarding. I do look back on it fondly. It was a life-changing experience.
It is a message to other institutions. If you are gonna drag this out, we are ready to go on strike. . . . It shows other institutions how strong labor is, and not just in cultural institutions, but labor in Philly.
Before we went out on indefinite strike, we held a one-day warning strike, but we could not get where we wanted. Then, we did our indefinite strike for nineteen days, and we did not come off the picket line until we had an agreement that we were satisfied with. The big blockbuster Henri Matisse show was being installed during the strike. They got scab art handlers to install the show. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have gone up, and we were planning to picket the opening gala. We reached an agreement two days before the gala, so that didn’t happen. They used random people; we have no idea where they came from. Or who they were. When my department came back, our materials and shop spaces were an absolute mess. There was stuff, tools, everywhere. They did not care at all. And that is who they got to install a priceless blockbuster show because they cared more about getting the show up than giving us what we deserve.
We found out through social media while we were on the picket line that the show was being hung by scabs. I think it invigorated us. Everyone was upset, but I think the people that I’m closest to on a day-to-day basis were the most enraged. It reflected very poorly on the PMA. You expect to maintain a certain level of professionalism—you expect that people specifically responsible for art-handling have the necessary experience, sometimes even with a specific collection, even with a specific piece of work, to install it properly and safely. I think for us, it felt very insulting. But also backtracking on the morals of the institution.
MC: Our contract will be up in June 2025. One of the things we were on strike for was a longevity agreement. We did get it in the contract language, but the museum has not been implementing
it. We reached out to City Hall representatives to let them know. The museum gets a lot of funding from the city and state; they can settle anytime. Instead, we are going to arbitration. We do not want this to be an outstanding issue, going into contract negotiations next year. [Editor’s note: The agreement was amended in May 2024, giving every current member owed longevity pay a bonus equivalent to the amount of longevity pay owed. A provision in the settlement allows the union to bring this back to arbitration if they are unable to arrive at a pay structure that rewards years of service in the 2025 successor contract.]
I think this organizing has inspired other museum workers. We had to go on strike for nineteen days to win our contract. It is a message to other institutions. If you are gonna drag this out, we are ready to go on strike. We have support and backing. It shows other institutions how strong labor is, and not just in cultural institutions, but labor in Philly. Having public conversations about conditions and how much you are being exploited is super important. The public can show up, contribute to strike funds, support petitions, and go out on the picket line. We had people who were not in the union come to the picket line almost every day. That was amazing.
JS: Our local includes workers in other Philadelphia museums, including Penn Museum, Please Touch Museum, and Schuylkill Nature Center. That feels very powerful. Penn Museum workers did one rally during a donor event, and then got their contract. I think perhaps that was a result of us successfully hosting a strike. I think cultural workers within the city of Philadelphia are better able to advocate for themselves and progress through a career path that is life-sustaining. Having more institutions within our local or even just more organized workers allows us to leverage our collective power more effectively. Keeping up with us on social media and staying abreast of our current longevity fight is incredibly helpful. The community really does propel us forward.
Author Biography
Kressent Pottenger holds an MA in Labor Studies from The Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at CUNY and was awarded the SEIU 925 Research Fellowship by Wayne State University in 2012. She is currently working on a research project about 925 and women organizing in the workplace.
