Posts tagged museum
DIA budget hearing: About 200 employees unionize
April 4, 2026 // Proposed fiscal year 2027 budget: $0 from the City of Detroit. DIA’s current budget is $45.5 million, with revenue generated through ticket sales, fundraising and a tri-county property tax millage. The DIA functions as an independent nonprofit since the city’s bankruptcy.
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.
MFA Boston will lay off 33 employees amid rising deficit and restructuring
February 2, 2026 // Unionised workers at the MFA fought to secure their first contract in 2022, following nearly two years of bargaining and a one-day strike. “In order to address a growing structural deficit and better serve our audiences, we are moving forward with a comprehensive plan to realign our organisation and create a sustainable business model,” a spokesperson for the MFA told The Art Newspaper in a statement. “Unfortunately, this plan includes the painful but necessary step of implementing a workforce reduction that calls for the elimination of 6.3% of total active employees. Leadership came to this decision only after careful consideration and extensive analysis.”
Workers at Some of the World’s Largest Museums Are Demanding Fairer Pay
December 2, 2025 // The potential new union chapter at the Met is with the Technical, Office, and Professional Union, Local 2110, part of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) union. The museum does have union chapters for projectionists and audio/visual technicians with Local 306 IATSE, and for about 700 security guards with Local 1503, part of DC 37, and there has previously been an attempt to establish a wall-to-wall union bringing all staff together in one chapter.
DIA workers say museum’s Diego Rivera murals inspired them to form a union
November 7, 2025 // Those murals, in part, have inspired DIA workers to move to form a union. The DIA Workers United effort was announced Tuesday by the Michigan chapter of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which is asking for voluntary recognition from the museum. “It’s been something that workers at the museum have been discussing, honestly, since I’ve been there,” says Tyler Taylor, who started at the DIA as an intern in 2008
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.
Museum of Science and Industry workers’ union votes to authorize strike
September 24, 2025 // The museum employees have been in contract negotiations for more than two years. Workers say 90% of eligible employees voted to strike, if necessary.
The Crucible workers are unionizing
May 22, 2025 // O’Neill was also part of the safety committee, an elected faculty representative, and a lead organizer with the union. They had been raising the alarm about safety issues at The Crucible due to insufficient staffing. The Oaklandside reviewed numerous emails from employees sent to the board and Steward during the past few months that cited ongoing safety and staffing issues. “Over the past year, The Crucible has struggled against financial hardship, affecting faculty and staff,” a letter sent to the board and signed by 74 employees stated. “The financial peril we have navigated has resulted in extreme cuts to the overall budget, reductions to already slim staffing, materials ordering and scarcity of supplies, unsafe studio maintenance, lack of proper training, development opportunities, and more.”
Toledo Art Museum Workers Move to Unionize
April 18, 2025 // Organizing under the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), some 100 workers will form the new union, which emerged after TMA’s glass technicians came together under Teamsters in 2007. The new unit will include staff from the visitor services, glass studio, research, education, curatorial, and library departments, among other eligible sectors, and is expected to grow upon selecting a representative.