Posts tagged museum workers
Met Museum Workers Move to Unionize
November 20, 2025 // On Monday morning, a labor union petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to approve a bargaining unit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that would cover roughly 1,000 salaried and hourly workers across the museum’s sectors. If the vote passes, the Met would rank among the largest unionized museums in the nation.
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.”)
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.
Penn Museum workers demand raises, protest Univ. pay proposals in picket after authorizing strike
July 10, 2025 // “The average annual salary in the bargaining unit is less than $45,000,” Shaw said. “We’re looking for raises that will not only allow workers to keep up with increases in the cost of living, but to do better over time.” Union leaders also handed out flyers that emphasized Penn’s continued “lowball pay proposals” despite the University’s “annual operating budget of $4.7 billion.” “It’s not so much to ask from the University of Pennsylvania, the largest private employer and one of the wealthiest in the city,” Shaw said.
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.
Workers Unionize at NIAD, Richmond’s Progressive Art Studio
October 17, 2024 // After NIAD workers delivered a letter of intent to executive director Amanda Eicher Tuesday morning, the organization’s board executive committee voted unanimously to recognize NIAD Unidad.
Unionized Science Museum workers await contract as cultural nonprofits face changing labor market
April 1, 2024 // Inspired in part by pandemic-era lay-offs, as well as record inflation, Twin Cities labor movements have seen an uptick in mobilization. Janitors, school teachers, university graduate students, plow truck operators, firefighters, nurses, rideshare drivers and coffeeshop baristas have all recently taken their arguments for better pay and working conditions to the public picket line, or threatened to. Museums have had a lower-profile in those labor efforts, but workers at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis and Science Museum all have unionized in the past four years with the goal of collective bargaining for employee-friendly contracts. Most of the Science Museum’s workers were laid off and sent home when the pandemic forced closures in March 2020, only to be gradually called back months later into a climate marked by social distancing and general uncertainty. Hazard pay for frontline staff in visitor services disappeared after a few months. Workers rallied and got it back.
Strike by Philadelphia Museum of Art workers shows woes of ‘prestige’ jobs
October 10, 2022 // Organizing one workplace can serve as an example for other similar workplaces to do the same. Adam Rizzo, art museum educator and one of the union’s leaders, says when it formed, it also created a new chapter, Local 397, which employees at other museums could join.
US unions see unusually promising moment amid wave of victories
March 16, 2022 // Gebre said the nation’s unions should send far more organizers and money to back the union drives at Starbucks and Amazon. “The rest of the labor movement should be willing to lend a hand,” even if they don’t get any of the members, said Gebre, who was recently named Greenpeace’s chief program officer. “That’s what solidarity means.”