Posts tagged museums
Unionization Wave Hits Nonprofit Sector
December 17, 2025 // ASeveral key economic factors are driving this current union organizing trend, including inflation and job security. In this environment, employees are motivated to seek the protections that higher pay and increased benefits offer. However, about one-third of nonprofit museums and cultural institutions are also struggling to confront the loss of government grants or contracts. More than half of museums reported fewer 2025 visitors than in 2019, according to a Novemberreport by the American Alliance of Museums. In spite of these conflicting economic difficulties, employees are continuing to push back, feeling that they have been taken for granted for many years. Bottom line: unions continue to seek out new groups of workers to organize as their traditional targets, such as manufacturing and production jobs, wane or move overseas. Nonprofit employers would be well advised to stay engaged with their employees, keep an eye on employee morale, and look for ways to reward employees' hard work even when funds are scarce.
Workers at more Chicago cultural venues are unionizing, even during a precarious moment for museums
December 12, 2025 // Still, the process of unionization may not be smooth at every site. At Chicago Botanic Garden, there’s a disagreement between workers and management with what steps should be required to establish a union. Employees who are advocating for better pay, health care and safety on the job and are represented by CMRJB Workers United say they are asking employees to sign union cards. However, Chicago Botanic Garden leadership opposes that approach in favor of a secret ballot election to vote on the union. “To skip that step would really be disenfranchising those eligible employees,” Chicago Botanic Garden President and CEO Jean Franczyk told the Chicago Sun-Times. “The process has multiple steps and options that you can pursue. But the one that we think protects individual eligible workers’ rights is that supervised election.”
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.
Size Matters: Workers at Smaller Museums Are Happier, New Survey Finds
October 31, 2025 // “Fifty-five percent of unions at art museums were formed in the last five years.” Non-union staff, the report found, earn about 78 percent of what their unionized counterparts make, though unionized workers tend to report higher levels of dissatisfaction overall.
Op-ed: Can Zohran Make NYC a Union Town Again?
September 9, 2025 // The new mayor could host big online unionization trainings with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have already done. If this led even a small fraction of Zohran’s 60,000-plus volunteers and over 6 million social media followers to start organizing their own workplaces—or to take a strategic job to unionize it—this could potentially generate thousands of new unionization campaigns. And were Mamdani to act upon our proposal to launch a broad Movement for an Affordable New York (MANY), then the pool of new potential workplace organizers would grow significantly.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom Signs Bill To Carve Out Exemptions For New Minimum Wage Law Following ‘PaneraGate’ Scandal
March 27, 2024 // Pretty much, AB 610 now proposes to exempt fast food restaurants located in places which could most afford the $20 minimum wage increase because off how much more they charge already: at casinos, airports, hotels, event centers, theme parks, museums, gambling establishments, corporate campus cafeterias, and publicly owned lands including ports, piers, beaches and parks concessions. Only the mom and pop family-owned fast food restaurants will be paying the $20 per hour minimum wage – a “living wage.”
Focus organizing drives on workers without college degrees, US unions told
May 8, 2023 // n contrast, unionization hasn’t taken off nearly as rapidly at many blue-collar, lower-paid workplaces. No other Chipotle restaurant has unionized since workers in Lansing, Michigan, voted last August to make theirs the nation’s first unionized Chipotle. Only one Amazon warehouse is unionized in the US, just two Apple stores and four Trader Joe’s. Those companies have mounted fierce anti-union counterattacks to slow and they hope stop the spread. Chris Rosell, the Teamsters’ organizing director, says one reason unionization of blue-collar workers often doesn’t catch fire is that it’s frequently easier for anti-union consultants to scare and deter those workers. “Blue-collar workers often aren’t as educated about this union-busting stuff,” he said. “They could be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics.” Rosell said the Teamsters often run elaborate campaigns that seek to inoculate workers from the pressures and propaganda from anti-union consultants. He said the Teamsters’ president, Sean O’Brien, hopes to double the union’s membership and focus organizing on such area trucking, warehouses and sanitation work. Erica Smiley, executive director of Jobs with Justice, a labor rights group, says it’s often harder to unionize blue-collar workers because they tend to have less economic security than educated workers and have greater fear of what will happen to them if they’re retaliated against, perhaps getting fired, for seeking to unionize.
Film Forum Workers Vote to Unionize in NLRB Election
June 21, 2022 // Full and part-time staffers who work in the theater, in programming, publicity, facilities and administration participated in the vote. According to the union, employees hope unionizing will improve compensation, change organizational development practices and standardize work conditions for workers across departments. The union adds that workers’ experience throughout the pandemic with furloughs and health and safety concerns helped spur their unionization attempt. Chad Bolton, Claudia Francois, Stephanie Gross, sustainable workplace, Alamo Drafthouse theater, Anthology Film Archives, Film at Lincoln Center,