Cross-occupational labor solidarity inside a white-collar union: The case of PASTA MoMA

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Abstract

This paper explores labor solidarity across occupational and status hierarchies in a predominantly white-collar union that aimed to be “wall-to-wall.” The case study focuses on the Professional and Administrative Staff Association (PASTA) of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Founded in 1970 and officially certified as a collective bargaining agent in 1971, PASTA was the first labor union of museum workers in the United States. Included in its bargaining unit were curators, conservators, archivists, as well as clerk-typists, receptionists, and waitstaff at MoMA restaurants—an ideal setting to examine labor solidarity across occupational and status hierarchies within the same worksite.

Specifically, I analyze higher-status union members’ responses when MoMA management threatened the jobs of office-floor receptionists and restaurant waitstaff in the 1980s. Higher-status union members mobilized swiftly for the receptionists. Drawing on archival data, I argue that the rationale behind such militant, broad-based support was that higher-status professionals relied on office floor receptionists to preserve the spatial separation and purity of specialized professional work. In contrast, in the layoff of waitstaff a year later, the same membership remained largely silent, deeming restaurant service staff paid hourly too unimportant to their professional work. This contrast reveals that it is the politics of networked skill and expertise, I contend, that was operative in union members’ claims-making across occupational and status differences.

Author

• Qianyue Xu, Columbia University