Source: In These Times
Before the recent wave of organizing among media workers, adjunct professors and nonprofit workers set the world talking about the promise of white collar unions, there had already been decades of quiet organizing among the white collar creative underclass. AĀ surprising amount of that organizing has been done by aĀ single local union: UAW Local 2110 in New York City, which with little fanfare helped to pioneer the sort of unionizing that routinely draws headlinesĀ today.
Beginning in the 1980s, the union organized workers at aĀ list of cultural institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, the Village Voice and HarperCollins Publishers. More recently, Local 2110 has been organizing the museum and culture industry at aĀ furious pace, at places like the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New York City Tenement Museum and the Childrenās Museum of the Arts. In just the past year, the union has added the Portland Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and Film at Lincoln Center, among others. (They also found time to help lead aĀ strike against aĀ pricey private school.)
Local 2110 is led by Maida Rosenstein, who joined after leading aĀ campaign to unionize administrative staffers at Columbia University in the 1980s. She has spent more than three decades assembling what may be the most prestigious collection of cultural institutions in America in aĀ single union local, all with aĀ resolutely anti-elite organizing model of keeping the door open to everyone. In an interview, Rosenstein offered the long view on the white collar union trend that continues in earnest to thisĀ day.
On the reason the UAW doesnāt just organizeĀ autoworkers:Ā
āUAW calls itself an industrial union, and theyāve long had aĀ view of trying to organize companies broadly. There were always aĀ certain amount of office workers, even in the Chrysler plant or whatever. When District 65 [the union she originally joined] affiliated with the UAW, they affiliated more on the ground of progressive politics than anything else. Walter Reuther took the UAW out of the AFL-CIO during the Vietnam War era. That was really where the affiliation came from. We in District 65 actually brought in aĀ lot of the white collarĀ organizing.ā
On the recent popularity ofĀ unions:
āI do think thereās aĀ generational thing. The millennial generation is aĀ lot more pro-union than my generation was. At least in the blue cities, it seems like there was aĀ wave of people who after Bernie Sanders, and after Trump was elected, embraced the idea of organizing. People went from Occupy Wall Street, where everybody was doing their own thing, to saying āāWe have to get organized politically.ā IĀ feel like that did carry overāāāunions made [sense to] aĀ lot of people when they thought about their disgruntlement at work. The millennial generation have been so much more open towardsĀ it.ā
On unionizing the museumĀ industry:
āIn museums, there have been these big shifts, with the expansion of the number of employees, and aĀ lot of money flowing in as theyāre very involved in land expansion projects, etc. They have these very corporate boards and much more highly paid leadership, and then they bring in aĀ ton of younger, educated people and pay them really low wages. Most of them are working there for idealistic reasons, and in largeĀ numbers.
āI thought the pandemic would put aĀ stop to that, would kill our organizing. And it didnāt. In some ways it made it easier. Museums and all these institutions were shut down, and aĀ lot of people were furloughed or laid off. Their institution betrayed them. AĀ lot of people saw that and felt they had no recourse, and it was very disappointing. They wanted to do something about it. Also, we found aĀ way of organizing virtually, too. There were certain things about it that made it more accessible. All these people got on these Zoom meetings, because really they had nothing to do. They were home, they were upset and they were isolated. This was something to really make aĀ difference. And it really tookĀ hold.
āThe pay issue is aĀ really big one. Especially in larger institutions, they have these trustees who are just like dripping with money. Museum leadership is starting to be like university presidents, where itās very obviously out of whack, and you have people who are paid really poorly. Museums are absolutely terrible at having large numbers of staff being very precarious, like the front line staff who do visitor services and the store. AĀ lot of them are part time, some of them are seasonal. They get paid like minimum wage or aĀ little above. In almost every museum itās like that. Very few of them have full time jobs. And even the more skilled positionsāāāart handlers, museum educatorsāāāthose have been converted into per diem positions, on-call positions, intermittent work. They basically work the way aĀ freelancer wouldĀ work.
āEven the people who are in the full time professional positions are paid very low. You know this from journalism: Youāre aĀ writer, and now youāve been busted down and people are making like $50,000 aĀ year. And thatās what happened in museums: Youāre aĀ curator and youāre making $50,000 or $60,000 and living in Boston, New York or Portland. Itās not very muchĀ money.ā
On why the publishing industry has been slower toĀ unionize:
āYou have corporations that are gobbling each other up. Itās like unbridled capitalism, and itās very, very difficult. They can move, merge, subcontract, do all these things with no control. Nonprofits can do aĀ lotāāāuniversities like Columbia are notoriously anti-union, and they do aĀ lot of bad thingsāāābut museums and universities so far havenāt been able to move some place. They canāt really pick up and leave. Weāre still doing better in the nonprofit sector than we are in the for-profitĀ sectors.ā
On the Village Voice, aĀ media unionĀ pioneer:
āThe union at the Voice was amazing when IĀ first met people there. At that point the newsroom was like 175 people or 200 people. It was very, very vibrant. They really ran the paper, they had so muchĀ control.ā
On craft unions vs. industrialĀ unions:
āThe arts unions, the craft unions, they have done aĀ phenomenal job for their members, but they are very focused and deeply wedded to their occupations. IĀ think administrative staff, for instance, have really been overlooked in aĀ lot of these institutions. We were appealing to them in aĀ lot of ways. In the museums they are [wall to wall unions that include everyone], but not all of them. We canāt always get wall toĀ wall.
āNo one is organizing museums in a [systematic] wayāāāno one has targeted this and said, āāThis is aĀ strategic target, weāre doing all this research.ā Weāre aĀ local union. We have opportunities to organize, weāre taking it. Weāre just trying to push the envelope forward where weāre ableĀ to.ā
On the difference between the 1980s andĀ today:
āWhen IĀ was organizing, it was like, āāA union, in an office? What are you, kidding? Thatās very blue collar.ā People said āāI donāt want to wear aĀ uniform, IĀ donāt want to punch aĀ time clock.ā At Columbia, they did aĀ full out anti-union campaign. They told us, āāWith aĀ union youāll have to go to meetings downtown. The union will come between aĀ secretary and her boss.ā It was really also sexist and elitist. It was hard. They ran an anti-union campaign, and we won our election at Columbia by eight votes out of 1,100 people. It was aĀ total squeaker. People wereĀ terrified.
āOne thing Iām noticing is that the anti-union campaigns [now] seem less effective. And thereās been more exposure. No one had ever heard of an anti-union campaign. It was like aĀ secret that bosses did this. And now itās out there. Everybody knows about Walmart, or Amazon or Delta. The fact that there was actual press on that stuff is amazing toĀ me!ā
Hamilton Nolan is aĀ labor reporter for In These Times. He has spent the past decade writing about labor and politics for Gawker, Splinter, The Guardian, and elsewhere. You can reach him at Hamilton@āInTheseTimes.ācom.
Hamilton Nolan is a labor writer for In These Times. He has spent the past decade writing about labor and politics for Gawker, Splinter, The Guardian, and elsewhere. More of his work is on Substack.
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