Met Museum extends staff pay until May 2 amid virus outbreak

New York

THE Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has announced that it will extend pay for all staff until May 2, providing job security for another month to its 2,200 employees as millions of Americans experience layoffs triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

"Our highest priority remains to support our staff as best we can in helping to keep everyone safe and as financially secure as possible," said Daniel Weiss, the museum's president and chief executive officer. "We realise that this announcement of a four-week extension of full salary support does not provide enduring comfort, but at the moment it is the best we can do in a rapidly evolving situation." Met employees had previously been told that the museum could only guarantee salary payments until Saturday. Separately, the Met reached an agreement with the union representing its guards and maintenance crews to provide time-and-a-half hazard pay for essential staff who must continue working on-site during the shutdown.

Even after the museum reopens to the public, officials expect to see reduced revenue and attendance.

As a temporary solution, the Met is exploring whether there is any way it could dip into its US$3.6 billion endowment fund. "No endowed organisation that loses its revenue can spend down its endowment without limitation since spending from it today has to be balanced against preserving it to support operations tomorrow," Mr Weiss cautioned in an email co-signed by Max Hollein, the museum's director. Few museums, though, have the financial resources that the Met does.

"We are all watching the Met for guidance and trying to prioritise our staff as best we can. But we are a medium-sized institution going into our third payroll without any revenue, and many of our funders have also taken hits, " said Seema Rao, deputy director of the Akron Art Museum in Ohio. Faced with a shortfall of almost US$1 million, Akron has announced that some of its 35-member full time staff would be furloughed, others would be cut back to part time and department heads would take 10 per cent pay cuts.

The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh have furloughed more than half their 1,003 employees. In Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum laid off 150 part-time student workers. And the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art laid off almost three-quarters of its 165-person staff. Bu,t on Monday afternoon, the American Museum of Natural History announced that it would pay staff through May 15 by requiring full-time employees to take two vacation days per week and cutting compensation for part-time workers. NYTIMES