Tenement Museum Employees Pushing for Union

Costumed performers and tour guides are fighting for unionization at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, where they work to recreate the squalid living conditions of turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants, the very group that was integral to 20th century unionization efforts. Dozens of the tenement employees protested last night outside a fundraiser for the museum at Chelsea Piers.

Most of the guides work part time for an average $17 per hour, with no regular pay increases, job security or health benefits. They say the management has been preventing them from joining Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers for more than a year now. In a statement, museum officials claim that any unionization should include all employees and the tour guides “wrongly want to include only part-time and per diem employees and exclude full-time workers.”

"I've been there five and a half years and only received a $1 raise after we starting talking about a union," says Lethia Nall, who portrays an indigent Sephardic Jew who arrived in New York in 1916. She tells Gothamist:

To suggest that per diem and part-time staff don’t deserve their own union is absurd. The full time staff is in a completely different building and they have very different job descriptions. We would love for them to organize with us, but we some of their issues are very different issues, and our right to organize shouldn’t be taken away from us if they’re not ready.

The educators at the museum are not just tour guides, they have M.F.A.s, they’ve been trained in conflict resolution, storytelling and facilitation. At the Jewish museum guides are paid $70 for a very equivalent tour and it wouldn’t cost the museum a dime to at least sit down with us and talk about our issues.

Museum officials insist on a hearing with the National Labor Relations Board to help conduct a secret ballot that will decide whether the majority of employees want to form a union; Local 2110 prefers a “card check vote,” which involves workers signing cards to indicate support for a union – a method the union considers easier to win than formal elections.

Photo: GothamCast

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By John Del Signore in News on March 5, 2008 11:18 AM

Comments [rss]

west side Michael

Joe & Carol Reich are smiling at this ,the wealthy

founders who started out poor theirselves.

Snoopy

They wanted to be part of the "Living History" diorama so where is the problem that working in a hardship situation isn't part of the job description?

It's off off off off off Broadway. Get real!

bodgie

The immigrants were poor, the museum isn't. A tour there will cost you $17 if you're an adult...With 15 ppl per tour. So you'd pay that much to get a volunteer Snoopy? The guides get $17, before tax, to do one of these tours that the museum has the potential to make $255 out of. Kinda like suggesting because of the history and pride in the game the Yankees players should all volunteer. Yeah right.

bodgie

The immigrants were poor, the museum isn't. A tour there will cost you $17 if you're an adult...With 15 ppl per tour. So you'd pay that much to get a volunteer Snoopy? The guides get $17, before tax, to do one of these tours that the museum has the potential to make $255 out of. Kinda like suggesting because of the history and pride in the game the Yankees players should all volunteer. Yeah right.

Snoopy

I use to coach Little League baseball and I did it for free. Where is the commitment here gang? We are telling stories of poor suffering immigrants.

Who's that actor coach that ran a school that had Deniro, Puchino and all those others that suffered through the method acting school?

Tgirl

it's method acting under those conditions

bklynd

UAW seems to be one of the few unions willing to organize these kind of white-collar, over-educated employees these days. I was adjuncting at NYU when they were organizing - I wanted AFT but it turned out the UAW had managed to build a lot more support.

FromtheFuture

$17 is pretty good actually. The museum I work at only pays $13 for the same position and all my coworkers are equally qualified-- almost all with MAs-- and similarly denied benefits.

gothamistgal

$17 an hour for part time acting work? Where do I sign up?

ILikeEick

Amazing. Life imitates 'The Onion.'

John Del Signore

I just updated the post in light of a conversation with with Ms. Nall. Her previous quote was taken from an outdated source; the museum did install an air conditioner since then, though she says the heat is still "minimal."

Jen S

Snoopy, 2110 is the PASTA (Professional and Administrative Staff Association) branch of UAW. No idea how that came about, but it's fun to make people stop and think.

Jerk Store

"I've been there four and a half years and I've never gotten a raise," says Lethia Nall, who portrays an indigent Sephardic Jew who arrived in New York in 1916. "I've had to work hours without a break in a cramped tenement apartment with no air-conditioning in the summer and minimal heat in the winter."

Obviously an actress who just isn't very devoted to her craft!

Snoopy

What's the rent per month?

What does this place have to do with making automobiles?

daddy d

The turn of which century??

tnturner

Ha! I I caught that too rcltrh.

WesleySnipesAlot

Lets not forget when they tried to expand into the building next door and were going to be pushing "real" immigrants out of their apartments. Double irony!!!

Jake Dobkin

when i need a definition of hypocrisy, i'm going to refer back to this post. if you can't unionize at the tenement museum, where can you unionize?

JMH

This is very meta.

rcltrh

"I've had to work hours without a break in a cramped tenement apartment with no air-conditioning in the summer and minimal heat in the winter."

The irony in this statement is hilarious.