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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Henry Garrido, Executive Director of DC 37, on Brooklyn Museum Layoffs
0:47:43
ยท
9 min
Henry Garrido, Executive Director of DC 37, testifies about the alarming layoffs at the Brooklyn Museum affecting 47 workers, including 19 DC37 members. He expresses outrage at the museum's decision and lack of transparency, highlighting the essential work done by union members and the museum's refusal to consider alternatives to layoffs.
- Garrido criticizes the museum's financial management, citing inconsistencies in hiring and salary increases while claiming financial distress.
- He proposes alternatives such as furloughs, revenue-generating initiatives, and examining fringe benefits to mitigate layoffs.
- Garrido emphasizes the importance of museum workers and calls for shared sacrifices to preserve jobs and maintain the museum's quality of service.
Henry Garrido
0:47:43
Good morning, madam chairman, good morning, members of the committee.
0:47:46
Thank you for holding this important hearing.
0:47:49
My name is Henry Guerito.
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I'm the executive director district council thirty seven representing, 32,000 union members and 100,000 retirees.
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We are the largest municipal union here.
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And I come before you to express my absolute alarm and outrage at the layoffs of the members and the workers being proposed at the Brooklyn Museum, which we're facing effective, March 9, just nine days from now.
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We proud to represent our members who do absolutely essential work on running one of New York's, city's culture jewels.
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Our members execute the members' wonderful public and community programs.
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They clean and maintain the exhibition space.
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They curate and install museums' invaluable art and cultural artifacts, and they keep this treasure and the public safe.
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With salaries as low as $30,000 a year, our members love the work they do because they love the museum even as they struggle to make ends meet.
0:48:57
On Wednesday, February 5, the Brooklyn Museum informed DC thirty seven that on February 7, '2 days later, the museum would announce its mass massive layoffs.
0:49:08
And we learned that at that point that 19 of our members will be giving thirty day notices that would be losing the jobs by March 9.
0:49:18
Together with 21 members of UAW, my sisters and brothers here of Local two thousand one hundred ten, and a handful of managers at the museums, the museum made the decision to lay off in total 47 people, we demanded to meet.
0:49:34
While our union members were being summoned one by one to receive the news from human resources, which is inappropriate, down the hall we were pleading with the museum outside council to pause lay off conversation and give us time to determine what was happening and why.
0:49:52
The Museum Council told our staff, right, that the museum had lost more than $11,000,000 in fiscal year twenty four and that they were on track to lose another $10,000,000 in fiscal year twenty five.
0:50:05
And they claimed they had no choice but
Carmen N. De La Rosa
0:50:07
Please continue.
Henry Garrido
0:50:08
Implement To add insult to injury, the museum asked the unions to give up protections that are guaranteed by the union contract that have nothing to do with financial implications.
0:50:21
They wanted the union to reduce the time required to do recall.
0:50:27
They wanted us to give up and ignore seniority.
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They wanted us to give all kinds of things that have nothing to do with money, I'll emphasize again.
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And while union members who worked very tirelessly were facing layoffs even after working for the museum for more than twenty years.
0:50:47
We ask why, right?
0:50:51
During the physical crisis, why would we wanna put the museum and the workers under this condition?
0:50:58
And there were other questions that were asked.
0:51:00
I'm not gonna ask, but I will say this to you, to your point, Madam Chairman.
0:51:04
I was here in 2016 when the museum was facing layoffs.
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And I was part of the negotiating team that included then First Deputy Mayor Dean Fullahan, the museum leadership, and many others.
0:51:20
And what resulted in that was that the director of the museum, myself, Dean, others, agreed to the, what you alluded to, which is the voluntary contributions by the folks.
0:51:33
There was also, in addition to that, an increased funding by the city and the city council that I was proud of, you know, push for.
0:51:41
And, and this is really important, A furlough that we did for the workers and the managers that were able to take unpaid leave for weeks at a time and implement it and sparse throughout the year in order to prevent the layoffs.
0:51:55
This was not an easy thing to do but the workers understood that because we were facing financial difficulties that we were willing to do everything possible to keep everybody employed.
0:52:06
That means even those who were not slated to be laid off took an unpaid furlough to be able to save their fellow coworkers in solidarity, which I thought was amazing.
0:52:17
And again, during this process, you know, we approached a museum and said, hey, why don't we do the same?
0:52:25
Why don't we start, as painful as it is, to look at alternatives?
0:52:30
I think some things were said.
0:52:33
I mean, I personally said, have your museum staff, you hiring people when you are looking to lay off people.
0:52:41
This makes no sense to us.
0:52:43
You're giving salary raises to managers.
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In this case, the director makes more than a million dollars.
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And you're giving raises to people when you're claiming poverty and claiming that you're broke.
0:52:56
So there's an inconsistency here where you're blaming the workers for your financial problems, but at the same time, you're unwilling to consider furloughs.
0:53:05
You're unwilling to do any kind of revenue producing pieces.
0:53:08
And it's not just the admission piece.
0:53:11
There are other museums who did minimum admissions, for instance.
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Did voluntary admissions say on these days we're gonna have minimum admissions.
0:53:18
They will not consider that.
0:53:20
Right?
0:53:21
And we said, why don't we, do the furloughs and that did not happen.
0:53:25
In addition to that, I said, I will commit to fight for the museum when it comes to budget season, to the budget cycle that we're about to engage.
0:53:34
And they would not consider that.
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So it begs the question, what is behind all these layoffs?
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And I will say this to you.
0:53:45
I've been the executive director for about ten years and at any given time we face layoffs and institutions lose revenue and you worked with institutions to come up with solutions to mitigate those layoffs because you have a fundamental understanding that you're not only having somebody lose their job, not have any money to put food on the table, but that there's a financial impact on the city.
0:54:12
Right?
0:54:13
In this case, the the Brooklyn Museum does a lot of work at the Department of Education.
0:54:18
There are contracts that they do to teach children.
0:54:21
That is not part of the revenue you heard today.
0:54:24
So when you heard from the commissioner, rightfully so, many institutions are facing those challenges.
0:54:30
That is a separate part.
0:54:32
In the last round in 2016, I remember we even discussed the David Bowie concerts and they needed a change to raise revenue with the staff of the security because they were making money out of these meetings with David Bowie at the time.
0:54:49
And we agreed to make some concessions then that would mitigate the impact on having the guards in terms of premium pay in order to give the museum more flexibility in working.
0:55:01
So there's always there are always alternatives.
0:55:04
There's a list of things we could be talking about that don't imply people losing their jobs And we are prepared to do that as long as it's shared sacrifices, as long as we don't see managers getting huge increases in salaries when our workers are seeing pink slips.
0:55:23
And I'll with this, madam chairman, because I feel very strongly about this.
0:55:28
One of the questions you raised is how much is the culture institutions part of our workers?
0:55:34
We were told at the bargaining table that it was 50% of the amount.
0:55:39
That's what we were told.
0:55:40
We were told that their deficits go back to 2015.
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And so one of the things that I asked was, well, can we look at fringes for instance?
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Healthcare is one of the biggest jump that they have had.
0:55:53
And I don't blame the museums because I think the commissioner is absolutely right.
0:55:58
This is not just a Brooklyn Museum issue.
0:56:00
It's endemic of all the museums and this is just the beginning of much layoffs that we're gonna see.
0:56:06
Can we look at fringes for instance?
0:56:08
How much does the city charge the museums in terms of fringes for workers, particularly healthcare?
0:56:14
And there's a methodology the city follows based on the administrative code that doesn't make any sense to us because you charge a hip HMO rate for cultural institutions that mostly don't have each hip HMO.
0:56:27
So there's rooms to do French work for all cultural institutions that would allow to reduce the cost of health care for the institutions.
0:56:37
But it has to be in the context, absolute context, of reducing costs and saving layoffs.
0:56:44
It can't just be for management to have more money to spend on trips, I'll say it, to spend on things that have nothing to do with the operation.
0:56:54
And I will close with this, madam chairwoman.
0:56:57
You know, this Brooklyn Museum is fantastic.
0:57:00
It has a history, has great exhibits, provides great service to the community, provides great service to the children.
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But what makes the museum shine are its people.
0:57:12
It's the workers who make this thing that take less of a salary and sacrifice to make sure they provide the services to that public.
0:57:19
Without that, we're just looking at all things on a wall, and people need to remember that.
0:57:25
Thank you.