In an update to a story we've previously reported on, UAW Local 2110 has announced that unionized workers at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York will carry out a strike action on October 5 if they do not receive a fair contract offer. The date is perilously close to that of the opening of a blockbuster Roy Lichtenstein exhibition, slated to open to the public on October 11, with press and member previews beginning October 8.
Whitney employees, as well as those at the Brooklyn Museum and Manhattan’s American Folk Art Museum voted earlier in September to approve a strike as contract negotiations with management dragged on. Workers at the three institutions are seeking improved health care and a raise to their minimum pay rate, which is significantly less than the annual $71,000 that a single adult living alone in New York would need to survive, according to the 2025 NYC True Cost of Living Measure Annual Report.
“It’s not that we want to strike,” union chair Derrick Charles, a membership associate at the Whitney, said in a statement at the time. “We’d rather be working and doing our jobs but our wages are untenable for making ends meet in New York City.” Charles, a ticket seller in the museum’s lobby, has held his front-facing role since 2018. He currently makes $24.00 an hour, $10 less than the living wage in New York City.
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