Statement of Values
June 2, 2021
“Philadelphia’s art museum.” “A place that welcomes everyone.” We, the unionized workers who bring the museum to life every day, take this mission seriously. We come to the bargaining table every week with serious contract proposals, because we believe that the vision of a museum that truly represents Philadelphia and welcomes everyone has still not been achieved.
The people who work for and administer the Philadelphia Museum of Art—the unionized staff, middle and senior management, and the board of trustees—are majority white, able-bodied, cisgendered, and economically and educationally privileged. The administration and the board have most recently acknowledged this fact with the establishment of an Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) with a senior-management-level deputy director at its helm. The PMA Union supports the allocation of these resources to create a more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible institution, but we also know the limitations of any top-down approach that is controlled by and ultimately accountable only to executives and trustees. We unionized because we believe that lasting structural change must be transparent, accountable, and informed by workers who know what change is needed.
DEIA initiatives, particularly those limited to new hiring, cannot succeed without concrete commitments to structural changes that make the culture of an organization more equitable, inclusive, and accessible. Bringing marginalized workers into an environment that cannot and will not support, protect, or promote them is not inclusive or equitable. A serious commitment to DEIA goals centers these values in a vision for institutional change. The PMA Union has drafted a constellation of contract proposals that will directly lead to the PMA becoming a workplace where people of all backgrounds can build sustainable careers throughout the organization.
Creating the conditions to retain and promote employees by recognizing qualified internal applicants—including the Black, Brown, trans, queer, and disabled people who already work here—is a major step toward equity in the institution.
So is overhauling job postings to include salary information and remove barriers to entry, like unreasonable degree or work experience requirements for the level and salary of the job.
So is a robust anti-harassment policy that protects workers and creates consequences for harassers before victims are driven to leave.
So is providing a living wage for all entry-level workers so that opportunities aren’t limited to those who can afford to work a job that doesn’t pay their bills.
So is instituting paid parental and family leave.
So is creating clear and transparent standards for promotion and re-hiring that leave less room for bias.
Our contract proposals are designed not just to improve conditions for our current workforce, but to attract and retain the future staff of the museum. By making the PMA a place where one can work without fear or precarity, we are building a future for the museum that will live on well beyond any of our own careers. There’s no question that the PMA’s current staff is too homogenous. That homogeneity is caused by the exact issues that our proposals are designed to address. So far, representatives of museum management have rejected proposals on anti-harassment, salary transparency on job postings, job security, and promotion standards out of hand.
We, the people who know what working at the museum is actually like, are telling management now: if you believe as we do in achieving the museum’s mission, take our proposals seriously. We need enforceable contract language to make sustainable careers for a diverse workforce at the museum a reality. We cannot afford for goals and initiatives to come and go with administrations, to be dropped when inconvenient or as soon as another building priority inevitably emerges. No top-down directive has fixed this issue at the PMA or any of our peer institutions. As the workers staffing the museum, we need to be included to make a change that lasts for more than one budget cycle. Work with us to fix this problem, not against us.
Signed,
The PMA Union DEIA Committee
The PMA Union Bargaining Committee
The PMA Union Executive Committee