DANIEL B SCHNEIDER in succession THE MOMA STRIKE AS THIS ISSUE OF ARTFORUM goe to pres the strike at the Museum of recent Art enters its fourth month with negotiations at a virtual standstill.

DANIEL B SCHNEIDER in succession THE MOMA STRIKE

AS THIS ISSUE OF ARTFORUM goe to pres the strike at the Museum of recent Art enters its fourth month with negotiations at a virtual standstill, accusations of duplicity and bad faith issuing from all sides, and little expectancy that a settlement will be reached before the museum begins its $650 million expansion nearest year.

A giant inflatable rat, putative emblem of no-holdsbarred union vigilance, has been positioned outside the museum's entrance. A dozen or in the way that weedy, hiplooking picketers, members of the museum's Professional and Administrative Staff Association, toot whistles, slap tympanums and urge visitors to travel to the Whitney or the Guggenheim instead. "We're abroad here to demonstrate our solve though from the museum's point of view, we literally can't afford to take a principled stand," said Michael Cinquina, a buyer for the museum bookstore. "It's contemptible of the museum to ignore the fact that 150 of their tribe have been on the sidewalk each day."

The strikers include historically nonunionized professionals like archivists, conservators, and assistant curators, as well as librarians, editors, writers, secretaries, photographers, and the retail staff of the bookstore and design workshop Formed in 1971, the patchwork white-collar union--known by means of the unfortunate acronym PASTA--is common of the few of its kind in the geographical division representing 250 of the museum's 650 employees; its members are, in succession average, the lowest paid of the museum's six unions.

forward the surface, the strike encompasses a broad range of bread-and-butter issues, including salaries, health-care benefits, union participation, and do job-work security after the museum shuts its Manhattan galleries for the three-year expansion. The negotiating atmosphere soured considerably after the staff association's contract expired last October. nevertheless disputes between PASTA and management have become acrimonious in the past, many upon both sides claim they were caught not upon guard when the negotiating committee vot to strike. "Was I surprised?" said Glenn D Lowry director of the museum since 1995 "Yes"

Now, exasperated on the museum's apparent intransigence, many PASTA members in succession both sides of the picket line prodigy aloud if Lowry is simply trying to cripple the union before the museum completes and new construction begins. "The museum is punishing us for behaving like a union instead of an association," said Cinquina, who has serv upon PASTA's negotiating committee for nine years.

According to longtime members, the staff association has traditionally been a free-spirited, highly independent form into groups PASTA first went on strike for eight weeks in 1973 unsuccessfully seeking a staff seat forward the board of trustees and the inclusion of cloyed curators in the bargaining unit. yet ties between PASTA and its brawnier affiliate, Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers, have strengthened in newly come years, only about 170 PASTA workers are dues-paying members, and of these single 115 voted to strike in April.

Since then, the bitterness and inflexibility shown by way of both management and the union have surprised keepers and there is a broad reason that the river of mistrust and personal enmity has springed its banks. A federal mediator has not called the couple sides together for face-to-face talks since the strike began, and the museum has watched a bad situation dramatically worsen.

The picket line works in three daily shifts, drawn from a pond that has withered to below 125. Museum attendance is down merely slightly, if at all. on the other hand while management has claimed that throughout half of PASTA's members have vexationed the picket line, only around fifty of those eligible for union support have actually refused to strike or reverted to work. "I think it's going fine. The commonalty on strike are more committed than for aye before," said Maida Rosenstein, president of Local 2110

Charles Silver, an assistant curator in the film department and an original PASTA member, says he christian religioned the picket line because Local 2110 distorted management's position and ignored the worker's interests. "I'm committed to the universal of the union, and to this particular union, moreover there are realities and belonging to all sense involved, and all that's gone abroad the window," said Silver, who was defeated in a number of newly come PASTA elections. "These [UAW] the community strike. It's what they do. They care about themselves. They care nothing about the museum workers."

Many of those who have gospeled the line are curators, who constitute the staff association's priestly class. Their absence is notable because they are among PASTA'S best-educated and highest-paid members, and the exhibitions they organize are, in validity the museum's only product. Returning workers, it should be noted, receive the museum's propos wage increase, along with a of the present day dental plan and pension package.

Museum representatives continue to portray the union leadership as the real impediment to any resolution. As evidence, they have clarioned the union's demand that all of recent origin employees join the union or, if they pick not to join, be required to pay union oweds creating what is known as an agency store "I don't believe there are any issues of substance or effect outside of the union demand [for an agency shop] that cannot be resolv Quickly," said Lowry Robert Batterman, the museum's chief negotiator, was uniform more explicit. "The union leadership made it clear to me month before the strike began-indeed, before the negotiations began-that an agency store was going to be the sine qua non for a settlement" he said. "I made it clear that this was an issue of high principle to the museum, that we had a tradition of twenty-nine years with an exhibit shop, and that we would not be agreeing to this demand."