An indication exterior the Brooklyn Museum throughout a union rally on February 25, 2025 (photograph Valentina Di Liscia/Hyperallergic)
The Brooklyn Museum is hitting pause on deliberate layoffs after the Metropolis of New York confirmed a further $100,000 in funding for the present fiscal yr. Of the 47 full- and part-time staff initially anticipated to be reduce, 27 accepted voluntary buyouts final week, however the destiny of the remaining staffers was unclear till town stepped in.
In response to Hyperallergic‘s request for remark, a Brooklyn Museum spokesperson confirmed the pause in additional workers cuts and added that “museum leadership is continuing its productive conversations with the City regarding funding.”
The museum’s unions, staff, and supporters fought for weeks in opposition to the establishment’s extremely criticized plan to put off greater than 10% of its workforce within the face of a $10 million price range deficit. After a sequence of rallies and a particular oversight listening to at Metropolis Corridor, management agreed to voluntary separation packages and retirement incentives — options to workers cuts that District Council 37 Native 1502 and UAW Native 2110, the museum’s two unions, had been advocating for.
“There is no reason why 47 people should be losing their jobs until we exhaust everything possible,” DC 37 Govt Director Henry A. Garrido mentioned on the Metropolis Council listening to on February 28, recalling that the museum provided furloughs to staff throughout a interval of monetary turmoil in 2016.
Pasternak shared a plan to implement what she described as “difficult cuts and strategic investments” throughout an all-staff assembly on February 7. Along with layoffs, she mentioned the museum would reduce programming, freeze hiring for positions that aren’t “critical for financial growth,” and cut back senior workers salaries by 10% to twenty%. The museum’s well-liked First Saturdays occasion was paused for 2 months as a part of the cost-saving measures.
All through six weeks of protests and negotiations, union leaders harassed their view that staff shouldn’t be taking the autumn for the establishment’s financial troubles. “They created a deficit and they want to balance that deficit on the back of our unions,” Native 1502 President Wilson Souffrant mentioned at a March 6 rally.
