Labor board dismisses South Street Seaport Museum workers’ first contract charge
The case was one of nearly 400 the labor board's general counsel pulled out of its New York region weeks before it was dismissed.
Labor and Capital
A federal labor board has dismissed an unfair labor practice charge brought by the newly unionized workers of the South Street Seaport Museum, who accused the museum of stalling their first contract by withholding bargaining information and refusing to schedule negotiating sessions.
Workers at the Lower Manhattan museum voted to join the Technical, Office and Professional Union, Local 2110, UAW in a National Labor Relations Board election in 2025, one of a run of union drives the local has led at New York cultural institutions.
Local 2110 filed the charge on August 27, 2025, saying the museum broke the National Labor Relations Act by failing to provide the union with relevant and necessary information and failing to schedule bargaining sessions, records obtained by Urgent Matter through the Freedom of Information Act show.
Region 2 assigned the charge to Field Attorney Burt Pearlstone and served the museum at 12 Fulton Street on August 28, 2025.
The board dismissed the charge on June 5, 2026, “for lack of cooperation,” a dismissal letter signed by Region 3 Regional Director Linda M. Leslie shows.
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FOIA Documents: NLRB file on South Street Seaport Museum dispute
The NLRB’s formal case file, released to Urgent Matter under a FOIA request.
Adam Schrader
Under the board’s rules, the party filing a charge must provide evidence to support it. Region 2 told the union in August 2025 that it was responsible for giving a sworn affidavit, producing witnesses, and turning over relevant documents.
The charge did not start in Buffalo. Local 2110 filed it with the board’s Region 2 office in New York, and a May 5, 2026 order moved it upstate to Region 3, records show.
The order transferred nearly 400 Region 2 cases to the board’s Regions 1, 3 and 10. It was signed by William B. Cowen for General Counsel Crystal S. Carey. The general counsel determined the cases should be moved “to effectuate the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act and to avoid unnecessary cost and delay.”
The board’s Region 3 asked Local 2110 in May whether it still wanted to pursue the charge. Its lawyer, Allyson L. Belovin of Levy Ratner, answered on May 12 that the union was still pursuing the case “because information has not been provided and the Employer has not scheduled sufficient bargaining sessions.”
Belovin requested two more weeks, until June 4, to submit the union’s evidence, citing vacation schedules and other conflicts.
The office granted the extension on May 22 and told Belovin “no further extensions will be provided,” an email from Regional Attorney Jessica Cacaccio shows.
The board dismissed the charge on June 5, the day after the deadline. The dismissal closed the case without any finding on whether the museum bargained in bad faith. Leslie’s letter gave the union until June 19 to appeal. It could not be determined from the released records whether Local 2110 appealed by the deadline.
The transfer was part of a case reallocation the general counsel announced on May 6. It involved moving roughly 3,500 unfair labor practice cases from busier regions to less busy ones to reduce backlog.
Carey, appointed by President Donald Trump and sworn in January 2026, has tightened the board’s intake rules. Charging parties must submit supporting evidence within about two weeks of filing or risk dismissal for lack of cooperation.
The attached list of transferred cases names a run of New York arts and cultural employers, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Foundation, Manhattan School of Music, the New School, Cooper Union, the School of Visual Arts and the New York Film Academy, among others.
Local 2110 represents professional and administrative staff at museums across the region, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, the Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum.
Urgent Matter previously reported on the union’s election win at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in January 2026, where the workers were also represented by Levy Ratner.
Follow along with other union matters at Urgent Matter’s labor tracker.
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