The Buffalo AKG Artwork Museum, previously the Albright–Knox Artwork Gallery, has come beneath scrutiny after the establishment laid off 13 workers and reorganized workers to successfully take away union positions.
Buffalo AKG Staff United, the union representing workers within the customer expertise (VEX), amenities administration, and meals providers departments, claims that the western New York artwork museum is retaliating in opposition to workers organizing efforts by eliminating employees from the biggest organized division in favor of hiring extra non-union roles.
The museum has not but responded to Hyperallergic’s rapid request for remark.
The workers adjustments observe greater than a yr of unionization efforts on the AKG, leading to its first contract in December. Slated to enter impact at the start of April, the reductions will have an effect on three full-time and 10 part-time VEX employees, stated Casey Moore, organizing director of Staff United Upstate NY, in an e mail to Hyperallergic.
On account of the cuts, the VEX division, which includes entrance desk representatives, gallery attendants, and each day operations volunteers, will likely be decreased by greater than half sicne workers started organizing, Moore stated, noting that these layoffs observe a earlier spherical of reductions that impacted 15 VEX staffers.
Eleven days in the past, the museum posted new job listings for 11 Preservation and Security Associates, a non-union safety guard place.
“At a time when employees’ rights are beneath assault nationwide, it’s appalling to see AKG take a web page from Elon Musk’s playbook — undermining its personal workers and our hard-won rights,” Moore stated, additional describing the reductions as “a “thinly veiled try to disguise … union busting.”
Andrea Harden, the museum’s director of expertise and tradition, instructed Buffalo Information reporters in a press release that the workers adjustments are primarily based on the previous 20 months of operational expertise for the reason that AKG reopened following a $230 million growth and renovation, which noticed the establishment double its exhibition area.
“We concluded that the position of the Customer Expertise Affiliate was not functioning the best way we anticipated,” Harden stated.
“On account of this deliberate operational change, the Preservation and Security workers, who’ve at all times secured the AKG’s property and amenities, will cease sharing that process with Customer Expertise Associates and return to taking full accountability for his or her authentic and important service,” Harden instructed Buffalo Information.
At the moment, March 7, museum employees and Buffalo neighborhood members rallied exterior the museum throughout its First Friday programming with an inflatable Scabby and indicators calling on the museum’s director Janne Sirén to cease the layoffs. One other signal accused AKG officers of profiting from the Elon Musk-led Division of Authorities Effectivity’s current workers cuts on the Nationwide Labor Relations Board.
Staff at New York Metropolis’s Brooklyn Museum have voiced related criticism of the establishment’s determination to put off 47 employees within the face of a $10 million finances deficit. Throughout a rally yesterday, Brandon Mancilla, a area director for UAW, one of many two unions representing employees on the museum, decried what he known as a “tradition of austerity.” Final week, the Guggenheim Museum additionally introduced layoffs, impacting 20 employees instantly with out wage cuts for senior workers.
Tayia Woolford, an worker on the Buffalo AKG Artwork Museum since late 2023, lamented the lack of her position within the VEX division in a press release to Hyperallergic.
“The museum instructed me we had been a household,” Woolford stated. “Now I’m left within the mud, in the midst of a housing disaster.”
