Mass MoCA employees ratify wage agreement, ending strike

Union members at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art voted Tuesday to ratify an agreement to raise wages, ending a three-week strike that saw workers picketing outside the North Adams museum.

The agreement, which will be in effect for two years, will increase average pay for bargaining unit’s roughly 120 members by more than 12 percent by the second year.

“It’s a good agreement,” said Maida Rosenstein, director of organizing for United Auto Workers Local 2110, which represents the museum union. “It’s really going to make a difference.”

The agreement, which mainly concerns wages, immediately raises earnings for union members, some 58 percent of whom earned $16.25 per hour. Those members’ hourly wages will increase to $18 per hour under the new agreement. Meanwhile, full-time staff will receive a 3.5 percent general wage increase in each of the two years.

Rosenstein said the agreement also offers additional paid holidays and will enable members to collect overtime on a daily basis following a 10-hour shift. She added that this was particularly significant at Mass MoCA, which hosts a variety of multi-day festivals.

“A significant number of people in the unit are technical people, who sort of work around the clock” during these events,” said Rosenstein. “Membership is very, very pleased about the agreement.”

Mass MoCA employees voted to unionize in April 2021, part of a broader pandemic-era trend that saw museum staffers unionize across the country. Following a one-day strike, Mass MoCA employees reached their first labor agreement with management in 2022, a contract that allowed them to reopen wage negotiations in late 2023.

Following months of negotiations with Mass MoCA leadership, union members voted to strike March 6.

“Equity and wage increases for MASS MoCA’s staff have never been a matter of if, but a matter of how fast,” museum director Kristy Edmunds said in a statement.

Calling the agreement a “bold precedent,” she added: “Our goal was shared, but our constraints and communication efforts for getting there differed.”