Met union accuses museum of stalling arbitration over 110 challenged workers

The union representing hundreds of workers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art says the museum is dragging out arbitration to keep 110 employees out of its bargaining unit.

“Met management is putting in long hours wasting time and money on stalling tactics in arbitration proceedings to keep 110 of our coworkers out of our bargaining unit,” the Met Union posted to Instagram this month.

Workers voted in January to unionize under the United Auto Workers Local 2110 in a National Labor Relations Board election.

The union paired the message with a meme showing a marble bust with a broken nose above the caption, “6 hours into management testimony about how I do my job.”

“Solidarity with our challenged 2110 members who have a legal right to join our union,” the post said.

The Met did not return a request for comment.

The museum challenged the eligibility of roughly 100 ballots at that election, objecting to including those staff in the unit, Urgent Matter previously reported. The union said in January the workers’ status would be determined “through a mutually agreed-upon arbitration process” once the NLRB certified the union.

The labor board certified Local 2110 as the workers’ representative on January 26, records show.

Local 2110 already represents workers at the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Dozens of New York City and state officials, including Zohran Mamdani, then the city’s mayor-elect, publicly backed the Met workers before the vote.

The museum faces a separate unfair labor practice charge tied to the union drive. An employee accused the Met of suspending a worker “in order to discourage union activities or membership,” in a charge filed on November 18, the day after the union petitioned for the election, as Urgent Matter previously reported.

The docket for that case shows a “Dubo Deferral Letter” issued August 10, a step that pauses the agency’s investigation so the underlying dispute can move through a grievance-and-arbitration process. The docket does not describe the terms of the deferral.

Records also show an open charge against Local 1503, a District Council 37 affiliate that represents other Met workers and that intervened in the 2110 election. An individual accused the local in July 2024 of failing its “duty of fair representation,” the docket shows, and that case remains open.

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