Posts tagged AFSCME Cultural Workers United
Union Effort at New York Transit Museum Heads to a Vote
March 17, 2026 // Museum workers first announced plans to unionize in early February, a decision they say was driven by concerns over job insecurity, unfair compensation, a lack of transparency around managerial decision-making, and isolation between workers in separate departments. The museum management’s decision to deny voluntary recognition marked a shift in its response toward unions at the institution: Last year, when three dozen sales associates working in the Transit Museum gift shop unionized through the Transport Workers Union 100, museum management opted to recognize the union voluntarily, allowing those workers to move forward without an NLRB election.
LACMA Declines to Voluntarily Recognize Union Formed by Hundreds of Workers
November 8, 2025 // The AFSCME Cultural Workers United District Council 36, a division of the national AFSCME Cultural Workers United, has helped workers unionize at other leading LA museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and Foundation, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and La Brea Tar Pits. At the national level, AFSCME Cultural Workers United represents employees at museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Art Museum, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Earlier this week, employees at the Detroit Institute of Arts announced plans to join AFSCME Michigan. In its new statement, LACMA United said that the museum’s status as a county museum makes management’s position “particularly troubling,” noting that, unlike mutual-benefit nonprofits, LACMA was established by Los Angeles County as a public-benefit corporation and receives more than $30 million in public funding each year.
Detroit Institute of Arts Workers Move to Unionize
November 5, 2025 // Since workers at the New Museum unionized in 2019, cultural workers at institutions across the nation have followed suit. Last week, staff at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announced plans to unionize (AFSCME). If recognized, the new union, LACMA United, will represent over 300 museum employees across institutional departments. A recent survey of more than 3,000 museum employees by Museums Moving Forward (MMF) found that while working conditions for unionized museum staff have shown modest gains since the survey’s first iteration, widespread low pay, burnout, and career dissatisfaction persist. The report also found that non-union staff earn about 78 percent of what their unionized counterparts make. (However, the report noted, unionized museum workers are “more dissatisfied on nearly all metrics than the average museum worker.”)
Los Angeles museum workers pushing to unionize
March 27, 2025 // Workers at Los Angeles County's Natural History Museum and La Brea Tar Pits Tuesday announced efforts to unionize, citing what they call a need for better wages, safer working conditions and increased diversity. The Natural History Museum & Tar Pits Workers Union would represent almost 300 workers and include performers, engineers, educators, guest relations associates and more, according to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 36.