Greater than 100 Seattle Artwork Museum workers introduced plans this week to unionize, becoming a member of the nationwide labor motion that’s swept via artwork establishments within the final six years.
The union, known as the Seattle Artwork Museum Staff United, will symbolize staff in over 20 front- and back-end departments. The union informed SAM director and CEO Scott Stulen of its formation in a letter, writing: “Our solidarity is a motion to enhance working circumstances in alignment with SAM’s mission, imaginative and prescient, and core values.”
The letter continues, “The challenges we face as unsustainable wages, subpar well being advantages, and siloed, top-down decision-making, are plain, systemic, and have endured throughout administrations.”
The Seattle Artwork Museum didn’t reply to an ARTnews request for remark.
Particulars of the bargaining unit shall be finalized over the approaching months. Union organizers mentioned they’ve a supermajority of assist amongst eligible staff, together with workers throughout curatorial, customer expertise, training, growth, and different departments important to the museum’s operations. Safety workers, who went beforehand unionized as SAM VSO (brief for Guests Providers Officers), an unbiased labor physique, won’t be a part of the brand new union.
SAM VSO shaped in Could 2022 and, following two years of contentious negotiations, together with accusations of union-busting ways by museum management, finalized a contract with SAM in late 2024. On the time, safety workers have been searching for higher retirement advantages, a seniority-based wage construction, and clearer alternatives for profession development.
Organizers for Seattle Artwork Museum Staff United (SAMWU) mentioned their prime bargaining priorities embrace “sustainable and respectful” wages, just-cause protections, and retention incentives, in addition to improved PTO, healthcare, and retirement advantages.
Chatting with ARTnews, Drew Davis, an artwork handler at SAM and an organizing committee member with SAMWU, outlined the group’s objectives in broader phrases: “We’re demanding a voice in decision-making. As staff of the museum, we sit on the finish of the road of each determination that impacts us.”
Davis mentioned the he had witnessed a spread of pre- and post-pandemic modifications at SAM, together with modifications to advantages and excessive workers turnover. “From 2020 to 2025, I noticed the slashing of advantages and the lack of tens of 1000’s of {dollars} in retirement financial savings for some folks,” he mentioned. “Folks burn out and go away to seek out higher-paying or extra sustainable jobs.” Whereas he mentioned he understood the impulse to stop, he added that the ensuing turnover “is a burden on everybody remaining, who’re left to select up the slack,” creating successive blows to morale.
Momentum for unionization at artwork museums, cultural establishments, and artwork colleges has solely grown within the wake of the pandemic, which precipitated quite a few layoffs. These organizing drives have been united by requires job safety, higher wages, and clearer paths for development.
In line with Davis, SAMWU filed for an election with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board Wednesday morning. The union is prepared to withdraw the NLRB election petition, nonetheless, if SAM management voluntarily acknowledges them earlier than Could 27. SAMWU has affiliated with the Washington Federation of State Staff/AFSCME Council 28, which represents a number of native and artwork establishments, together with the Tacoma Artwork Museum.
SAM VSO, the museum’s unbiased safety officer union, started organizing in 2021 and secured a contract after a 12-day strike. “A full-time job ought to present the fundamental issues it’s good to deal with your self—housing, meals, well being, even psychological well being,” Marcela Soto-Ramirez, a SAM VSO co-representative, informed ARTnews on the time of the strike.
Amid the present organizing drive, Davis added: “We wish to imagine within the energy of artwork and what this establishment can present for our area. Nobody works at an artwork museum as a result of they love cash, however we need to reside within the metropolis that homes that museum.”
