More than 400 AGO workers on strike

Move comes after 10 months of bargaining efforts

Hundreds of employees at the Art Gallery of Ontario are on strike as of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday morning over a dispute with the museum concerning outsourcing and compensation.

The strike comes after 10 months of bargaining between AGO management and Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 535, which represents some 430 staff members.

In a statement issued on March 13, the union said the gallery is “increasingly drawing on precarious, part-time work and contracting out, which is creating a growing underclass of struggling workers.”

The employees on strike include curators, conservators, front-desk staff, technicians and hospitality workers.

The union said its members were hit hard by Bill 124, the 2019 provincial law that limited pay increases for many public sector workers to one per cent annually. The controversial bill was repealed last month after furor from unionized workers.

“If we claim the arts matter, we must value the workers that make that possible,” said Local 535 president Paul Ayers in a separate statement, adding that the union is also fighting for fair compensation. “Some of us have worked here for decades. Over time, we have seen the gallery turn toward contracting out labour and increasingly relying on part-time, precarious work. It’s getting harder to make a decent living as an employee of the AGO.”

Laura Quinn, director of communications for the AGO, told the Star in an email this month that the organization was working hard to avoid a strike.

The ongoing labour dispute comes after a year of financial instability and controversy for the AGO, which is partly funded by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, and is considered to be one of the largest art museums in North America.