A week after workers began a work stoppage, the union at the Seattle Art Museum is still on strike. The union claimed in a statement that the agency had been engaging in “bad faith bargaining” during contract negotiations.
The union, formally known as SAM VSO (short for Visitor Services Officers), is demanding retirement benefits, a seniority-based pay system and career development opportunities.
art news The Seattle Art Museum has been contacted for comment.
SAM’s unionization efforts became public in January 2022, but organizing began as early as May 2021. More than two years later, the union and museum leadership remain at the bargaining table, making it one of the longest contract negotiations at a museum in recent years. The museum’s record is nearly the national average, according to the nonprofit Museum Forward. Twice the level.
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The museum said in a statement on Dec. 4 that it made its “last, best, final offer” to the union on Oct. 31, and that the agreement is valid until Dec. 20. A week ago, the security staff, representing about 70% of the museum’s interior, went on strike.
SAM leadership is currently proposing a new hourly wage of $23.25 an hour, slightly lower than the union’s latest offer of $24.75, which is already below the organization’s original demand of $27.
“A full-time job should cover the basic needs you need to take care of yourself, including housing, food, health, and even mental health,” said Marcela Soto-Ramirez, a union representative who has worked at the museum for three years. Soto-Ramirez said. Tell art news. “I’ve been struggling to buy shoes because I’m in the gallery all day and need them. Why do my colleagues and I have to go to Goodwill to buy shoes?”
In a statement released earlier this month, SAM described its wage levels as “market leading”. But the proposed wages are still below what some estimate is needed to make ends meet in Seattle. 2023, seattle times According to the report, renters in Seattle need to earn an average of $40.38 per hour, or $84,000 per year, to afford a one-bedroom apartment.
Workers also lost the 403(b) retirement race during the Covid-19 pandemic; retirement benefits have been partially restored since unionization began.
Included in the union’s demands is a contract provision establishing union ships, also known as a union safety clause. This would require employees in the department to join a union and pay dues.
“Without mandatory dues, the union would have to go after its members like a debt collector,” said union representative Joshua Davis, a gallery guard who has worked at the museum for more than a decade. “It was like a hole in the boat that kept getting flooded, leaving us with no time to plan and organize our actions – the things that allowed us to win.”
One of the dilemmas of the SAM VSO is that its name is something of a misnomer. In addition to curatorial and administrative positions, it is increasingly common for museum employees to work across departments. Gallery guards may work in the gift shop one day or the information desk the next, despite their formal job titles.
Nizan Shaked, professor of art history, museum and curatorial studies at California State University, Long Beach art news This is indicative of a trend across the industry. “Over the past 20 years, the functions of guards and docents have increasingly collapsed, and museum visitors know this,” she noted, adding, “The battle between the VSO and the museum’s board, a labor-based The fight for the foundation only reveals the contradictions of an institution that serves the stated goals of the field and a knee-jerk reaction to union bankruptcy.”
After the union push began, some SAM employees were similarly reclassified to titles that included the word “security,” according to Davis. When the union initially decided to be represented by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) Local 116 rather than create an independent union, the organization faced immediate opposition.
Under the terms of the National Labor Relations Act of 1947, when a person is classified as a “security guard,” he is legally only a security guard. At the time, a “guard” was strictly defined as any individual employed to enforce rules that protected the safety of the employer’s property or persons on the employer’s premises. The provision, which separates security personnel from other workers, could prevent the establishment of a so-called “comprehensive union,” a union that represents the entire workforce, effectively blocking the union’s affiliation with a larger national union.
“Different unions have different strategies about which positions to fight for, and I think some unions think it’s a hard fight so they don’t even bring it up,” Amanda Tobin-Lee, co-developer of Museums Moving Forward Art Museum Amanda Tobin Ripley said. union index, tell art news. “Museum staff, most of whom have no union experience, accept this advice but don’t necessarily know they can challenge it.”
The alliance reached an impasse when the board of directors refused to recognize IUPAT as a representative of the VSO. The National Labor Relations Board cannot represent a union because there is a provision that prohibits the NLRB from obtaining such certification if the union represents security guards and Non-security personnel.
In a statement released in 2022, a SAM representative said, “Voluntary recognition of the union does not address the conflict issues the law was designed to prevent, and the union acknowledged this issue by withdrawing its NLRB petition.”
This does not mean that such recognition is not possible within the museum sector or the wider workforce. The Service Employees International Union is a “hybrid guard” union like IUPAT Local 116, which represents security personnel at Allied Universal, which is contracted by Amazon. Museums such as the Walker Art Center, Walters Art Museum, and Tacoma Art Museum have successfully staffed guards in voluntary recognized units.
At the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Local 2110 union tried unsuccessfully to include visitor services workers who had been reclassified internally as hybrid security and visitor services workers. After the museum resisted, the case went to arbitration; the NLRB ruled in the museum’s favor.
“The ostracism of guards and managers is probably pretty typical,” Ripley said, adding that SAM resistance to security measures is rarer. “Every new art museum contract negotiated to date has included a union security clause unless the museum is located in a right-to-work state, but so far that clause only applies to the Milwaukee Art Museum.”
Other unionized museums, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, have unionized security guards. However, options for the security guard parent union are limited. Often, the most viable option is to ally with the union representing police officers – something SAM staff are unwilling to do.
“Most of the workers here are trained artists,” Davis said. “There are people who go into the field to become curators. It’s a weird set-up where the stated mission of the museum is to support artists, but they’re not going to support survival. I have colleagues who are going to food banks.”
