Seattle Art Museum workers vote to unionize
Ten ballots were challenged, but too few to affect the outcome.
Labor and Capital
Workers at the Seattle Art Museum voted to unionize, with 97 ballots in favor and six against, a National Labor Relations Board tally shows.
The June 17 tally covers 136 eligible voters represented by the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28. Ten ballots were challenged, but too few to affect the outcome, records show.
The unit, organized as Seattle Art Museum Workers United, spans the museum's downtown location, the Seattle Asian Art Museum, and the Olympic Sculpture Park. It includes full-time, regular part-time, and part-time flexible employees.
The NLRB lists the case as open, and the agency had not certified the bargaining unit as of the tally's issuance, records show.
Seattle Art Museum Workers United celebrated the result on social media.
"94% of our colleagues voted YES to unionizing as Seattle Art Museum Workers United," the group wrote in a post to Instagram.
The group said it is now pressing the museum to begin contract talks.
"We're asking management at SAM to sit down with us and negotiate a fair and full contract to make SAM the best museum it can be!" the group wrote.
The museum said it accepts the outcome. Emily Haight, the museum's director of public relations and strategic partnerships, told The Seattle Times in an email that the institution looks forward to bargaining.
"We look forward to sitting down with SAMWU leadership to begin negotiating in good faith a fair and sustainable collective bargaining agreement," Haight said, The Seattle Times reported.
Urgent Matter previously reported that workers, in a May 13 letter, asked museum director Scott Stulen and the board of trustees to voluntarily recognize the union by May 27.
They said they would otherwise proceed to an NLRB election. The parties signed a stipulated election agreement on May 20 and the vote was held on June 17.
In that letter, workers cited unsustainable wages, subpar health benefits and top-down decision-making. They said they were seeking higher pay, stronger benefits and job protections, including just-cause employment language in place of at-will employment.
Seattle Art Museum workers seek union recognition
The new organizing effort follows an earlier union campaign by security workers at the museum.
Adam Schrader
The campaign follows an earlier organizing effort by the museum's security workers. SAM VSO Union, an independent union representing visitor service officers, formed in 2022 and won its first contract in 2024. The security union reached that deal in late 2024 after a 12-day strike, The Seattle Times reported.
The vote adds Seattle Art Museum workers to a wave of museum and cultural sector organizing in recent years, as workers at major arts institutions have pushed for higher pay, stronger benefits and a greater voice in workplace decisions.
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