manifest

MUSAC employees demand the regularisation of their working conditions, after six years of employment in the museum.

The staff of the educational team of the DEAC (Department of Education and Cultural Outreach) at MUSAC1 are responsible for the design, management and execution of nearly all educational, social and cultural activities carried out by the institution. Now, they are denouncing their irregular employment conditions, which have extended over a period of six years, beginning with the opening of the museum in 2005.

Over the course of six years of intense work at the DEAC of MUSAC, we—the five female educators and one male educator who constitute this education department—have witnessed our educational and outreach program grow and strengthen while, little by little, our working conditions have been getting increasingly difficult, starting from initial conditions that were already insecure and unstable. As employees, we have transitioned through diverse categorisations that have camouflaged our real relationship to MUSAC, which is officially recognised as “self-employed workers”2. Due to justifications related to a diminishing budget, we have been confined to a precarious situation, and the work we have been carrying out has finally become unsustainable.
We believe that a sustained practice of cultural and pedagogical work, based on a direct collaboration with local citizens that encourages their participatory and critical involvement in the museum program, is an inherent part of the social function for which institutions like MUSAC were created.
In spite of this, today we feel forced to make our working conditions public and demand that MUSAC acknowledge our rights as employees. The progressive loss of rights we have suffered has unavoidably led to a situation where our jobs are at risk.
We hope that our demands encourage public administrators to take responsibility. The administration should be contributing to the creation of stable work conditions in the institutions they manage. Instead, their hiring politics have nurtured fictitious businesses and the figure of the “false” self-employed worker. The direct consequence of this activity is the increased precariousness of cultural and educational work.
Worldwide, numerous cultural collectives denounce the mounting precarity of work in the cultural sector, a situation that in Spain’s centres (museums, theatres, galleries) has reached limits that surpass legal standards.
In general, institutions have sufficient budgets for maintaining and improving the contracts of their employees, in order to ensure that contracts honestly reflect employees’ functions. However, in the context of today’s economic crisis, institutions are straining to maintain the same activities they have always carried out, in spite of the budget cuts being introduced. This impossible circus act has left workers themselves to bear the brunt of the impact of such cuts.

Specifically, in the case of museum educators, budgets dedicated to the fundamental activities of education and outreach normally represent a ridiculously low percentage of the institution’s entire annual budget.

In our workplace, MUSAC, hiding behind a façade of international recognition and success, obscures the precarious reality of its employees. In our case, this has meant that the education department has been working under different types of contractual agreements, such as the fake self-employed worker, which fail to accurately represent the continuous and exclusive labour relationship we have had as employees of the Century Foundation. Self-employment is an inferior status that has lead to the depravation of our rights as workers, excluding us from benefits such as medical leave, maternity / paternity leave, unemployment coverage, social security, retirement amortization…

The Century Foundation has just opened a public tender to contract out their museum education services. This move supposes the loss of jobs in less than two months, without any rights for reclamation. This action will also have adverse affects on the links that have been created, over time, between the museum and the local community: families, collectives, schools, associations, hospitals, community centres, etc.

In light of this, we are obliged to let the public know about our situation. We are asking for support and solidarity in our intent to get the public administration to accept responsibility and acknowledge our situation. We hope our actions can be felt by, and assist, our fellow colleagues who are also struggling in precarious conditions.

Signed, the Collective of cultural workers at MUSAC

You can support our cause by signing below or by sending letters to the following email addresses:
musac@musac.es
fundacion.siglo@jcyl.es