Strike at Mass MoCA Ends With Contract Vote

Staff ReportsiBerkshires Staff
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — A three-week strike by unionized staff of Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art has ended with a contract agreed on Tuesday by both sides. 
 
Members of UAW Local 2110 voted Tuesday evening to ratify an agreement that will settle wages for the next two years. 
 
"We are very pleased to have reached an agreement with the Mass MoCA that raises minimum pay rates and improves working conditions," according to statement from the local. "We are looking forward to getting back to the jobs we love."
 
The contract includes an immediate minimum wage increase to $18 an hour for some 58 percent of the workers, up from $16.25. 
 
The new wages are retroactive to Jan. 1; the union had asked for retroactive wages to October 2023, when talks first began.
 
Full-time staff will receive general wage increases of 3.5 percent in each of the two years, and some workers will receive additional equity increases based on seniority and level of responsibility, according to the UAW. The average pay will increase by 12.1 percent in the second year. 
 
The new contract also includes additional holiday pay and establishes overtime pay for any shifts that last over 10 hours in a day. 
 
The union, which represents about 125 employees of the museum, went on strike March 6 after five months of talks.
 
Workers had been outside the museum with signs for weeks as management and volunteers tried to operate the largest contemporary museum in the United States. The strike had affected attendance and restaurants and shops on the sprawling campus. 
 
"Equity and wage increases for Mass MoCA's staff have never been a matter of if, but a matter of how fast," said Director Kristy Edmunds. "The agreement marks another bold precedent that both the union and Mass MoCA desired and worked together to achieve — Mass MoCA's minimum wage will jump to $18 an hour in addition to numerous wage and equity increases. 
 
"Our goal was shared, but our constraints and communication efforts for getting there differed. In our last bargaining session on Sunday, there was authentic, productive cooperation and clarity, which enabled all parties to agree."
 
The union had been advocating for $18.25 an hour minimum; the museum had most recently counter offered with $17.25, which the union rejected last week. 
 
The agreement comes after eight collective bargaining sessions focused solely on employee wages.
 
The strain had led museum officials to announce the closure of the museum on Wednesdays through April in addition to the regular Tuesday closure.
 
Technical, Office and Professional (TOP) Union, Local 2110, part of the United Auto Workers, represents more than 3,000 employees in the education, creative, publishing and law fields. 
 
MoCA hourly workers joined the local in 2021 and held a one-day strike back in 2022 over wages. Organizing at museums and other nonprofit "creative economy" institutions has been on the upswing following the pandemic, rising prices and stagnant wages.

Tags: mass moca,   strike,   union contract,   

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Optimal Healing in North Adams Expanding Services

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Optimal Healing was opened in 2019 by Ashley Benson, who wanted to help people receive quality mental health care with access to other wellness and healing services.
 
"I realized there was a real need and market for something beyond typical mental health like the sterile environment of going into therapy and working with kids and families," Benson said. "The need for that to me was just an absolute necessary and the environment that I wanted to create for my clients."
 
Benson is a licensed social worker and therapist who works primarily with children. She has more than 20 years experience in therapy and consulting and holds postgraduate degrees in clinical social work and advanced practice with children and adolescents.
 
A few years ago, she purchased the former carriage barn of the Sanford Blackinton Mansion on East Main Street, bringing a number of other wellness practitioners under the Optimal Healing umbrella.
 
Optimal Healing provides different types of mental health support for people, a goal Benson said she wanted to bring to the community so that they could have services easily accessible. That was important to her own healing journey, she said.
 
"That combination of wellness and healing and doing talk therapy but also getting to the yoga class and getting inside my body and learning how to breathe were all imperative to my own journey and healing. So that parallel process, along with my practice, just brought to light that real need for people to be able connect those things, and our communities are difficult due to geography, to different silos in the community, and so bringing that under one roof was important to me just to give people access," Benson said.
 
"Talk therapy is not for everybody but a yoga class might be and so putting that all in one place — you don't have to do all the things, you can just pick one or you can do several, maybe eventually you start with one and it grows into something more."
 
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