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May 12, 2005

Jeremy Schwab

As visitors flocked to the Museum of Fine Arts on a recent Sunday afternoon for the Art in Bloom event, members of the Museum Independent Security Union met them with a display of protest signs and an offer of flyers conveying their plight as they engage in contentious contract negotiations with the museum.

The guards’ three-year contract expired March 18, and MFA Director Malcolm Rogers is pushing to eliminate health, retirement and overtime benefits for the 115-member union, said union President Michael Raysson.

“This is the first time they tried to get rid of health and retirement benefits,” he said.

With the contract being extended from negotiation meeting to negotiation meeting, tension is high for the guards, roughly half of whom are African American, Caribbean or Latino.

The union, which represents all but four or so of the full- and part-time guards at the museum, is fighting for a pay raise and to retain the benefits the MFA wants to cut.

Union members say the museum could afford to maintain their benefits.

“Why not sell probably just one painting?” union member Mary Berry, 57, of Dorchester asked wryly. “That would take care of us.”

The MFA is conducting a capital campaign to raise $425 million, $180 million for its endowment, $180 million to expand the building and the rest for contingency, according to spokeswoman Dawn Griffin.

Griffin denied that the museum is trying to get rid of all health, retirement and overtime benefits, but would not say what the MFA’s demands are.

“That is not what the museum is doing,” she said. “From the beginning, we had an agreement we would negotiate at the table and not through the media.”

Guards, who are paid between $11 and $13 per hour, complain that during his more than 10-year tenure Rogers has reduced the number of full-time guard positions, creating in their place part-time position.

Raysson estimates that roughly 60 percent of the guards were once full-time. Now, he estimates 40 percent are full-time. The number of guards, meanwhile, has not changed much, he said.

“The number of people there is basically the same as 10 years ago,” he said. “It may vary by two or three.”

Part-timers do not receive health or retirement benefits, say union members. But some are asked to work close to 40 hours a week.

Guards can work such long weeks and still be considered part-time because, in their contract, their status is based on how many base hours they are scheduled for each week. Overtime hours are not counted in determining a guard’s part-time or full-time status. Anyone working under 30 hours is considered part-time, according to Raysson.

Part-time guard Carlos Oviedo of Roxbury said he is often required to work long weeks without benefits.

“I am part-time, but I have been working over 40 hours since I started,” he said. “Most of us part-timers work over 40 hours sometimes. It is not a good policy. In reality, I am a full-timer, so I see a contradiction there. We should get health benefits, vacation and sick days.”

Union members say that the proposed benefit cuts together with the trend toward part-time work threaten them economically.

“We want to have over-time, because we work functions and things,” said Rose Lewis, a part-time guard who is Wampanoag. “The price of living goes up every year.”

So far, contract negotiations have made little progress, despite some support for the union from elected officials. Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, state representatives Gloria Fox and Byron Rushing and city councilors Chuck Turner and Felix Arroyo were reportedly drafting a letter to the MFA supporting the security guard union’s position.

“Neither side has budged hardly at all,” said Raysson. “They budged ever so slightly on retirement. They just said they would be willing to bargain on retirement benefits if it comes up.”

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