Whitney Union Sets Strike Date Days Before Major Roy Lichtenstein Show
Unionized staff at the Whitney Museum of Art will begin striking on Monday, October 5, if they cannot reach a contract agreement with the museum, Local 2110 UAW announced today. Workers at the Whitney Museum approved strike action earlier this month in a milestone vote held in conjunction with unions at the Brooklyn Museum and American Folk Art Museum. The Whitney union, however, is the first to put a deadline on the calendar—October 5, only three days before member and press previews open for the museum’s major Roy Lichtenstein retrospective (the show opens to the public October 11). The union’s first contract, ratified in 2023 after 16 months of bargaining, expired in June. The three-and-a-half-year contract covered approximately 200 workers and raised the wage floor significantly across the museum: staff members who made the minimum hourly rate of $17 in 2023 were subsequently paid $22, with a final salary bump to $24 per hour by 2025. For their...