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Exploring potential solutions to prevent layoffs at Brooklyn Museum
1:02:29
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Council Member Hudson and Henry Garrido discuss ongoing conversations and potential solutions to prevent layoffs at the Brooklyn Museum. Garrido outlines several ideas that have been proposed or could be considered to address the financial crisis without resorting to layoffs.
- Union offered furloughs, which were rejected by management
- Suggestions include implementing minimum admission fees on certain days while keeping others free
- Emphasis on the need for shared sacrifices and creative solutions
- Council Member Hudson expresses willingness to work with the union and museum for further discussions
Crystal Hudson
1:02:29
Absolutely.
1:02:30
And I'm I am absolutely willing to to work with you and with the museum to make sure that some of those conversations do happen.
1:02:38
And then just my my only other question was about that specifically.
1:02:42
Are those conversations still happening to put potential solutions on the table?
Henry Garrido
1:02:48
Yeah.
1:02:49
We offer furloughs and management rejected those.
Crystal Hudson
1:02:52
Right.
Henry Garrido
1:02:52
So again, we're going back to the book.
1:02:55
It's not something we want to do.
1:02:57
Right.
1:02:57
But a furlough for people, even those who are I think some of the workers that you'll see here will be willing to take and we can know to pay for and make sure their fellow workers have a job.
1:03:08
I've heard from them.
1:03:09
I wouldn't be able to do it if they weren't in support of that.
1:03:11
So but management has rejected that and has rejected that to be fair because it's not part of an overall solution.
1:03:20
It's only a piece of it.
1:03:25
So but I do think that there are other ideas.
1:03:27
To the chairwoman's point, we may have voluntary so one of the things we did in '16 is that when the voluntary contribution came into the museum, because it's not like a lot of the museums in Manhattan, where you have a lot of tourist traffic, we said, does that exclude children in the area?
1:03:45
And we said, no, they're not gonna pay.
1:03:48
Can we make it such adults pay a minimum amount on certain days?
1:03:54
Can we make what we discussed last time was can we make, say, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday free and the other two days will be pay?
1:04:01
It doesn't have to be an all in everybody pays to you know, we could work around and say, that estimates to generate x based on your incoming.
1:04:12
And it would allow in you know, communities to access the museum for free on specific days because we're facing a crisis.
1:04:19
Right?
1:04:19
We could do that in a way that it could be furlough that it could be sunset.
1:04:23
I'm sorry.
1:04:24
That we just do it for the next two years to until we can figure out and then work on on the financial stability of the museum.
1:04:31
There are a lot of ideas and things that we can do, but I think the last resort should be laying off people.
Crystal Hudson
1:04:38
Absolutely.
1:04:39
I agree with that.
1:04:40
I'll be in touch around continued conversations.
1:04:42
Thank you.
1:04:43
Thank you, Chair.