Posts tagged Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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.”)
LACMA Employees Push to Unionize, Calling for ‘Fairer Compensation’ and ‘Expanded Benefits’
October 30, 2025 // The AFSCME Cultural Workers United District Council 36 has aided in the unionization efforts at other 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. The larger AFSCME Cultural Workers United represents employees at museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Frost Art Museum in Miami, the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts.