Security guards at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) reached a tentative agreement with the institution yesterday, December 11, ending a twelve-day strike that began on November 29.
The 59 guardsmen of the SAM Visitor Service Officer (VSO) Union voted overwhelmingly to ratify their first union contract with the museum, securing a base pay increase from $21.68 to $24.18, effective next month is becoming. The union’s approval of the new contract ends more than two years of stalled negotiations and a nearly two-week strike.
“When there would be no further movement in the negotiating room, we had to take to the streets,” said Andi Berkbigler, a security officer for more than five years. Hyperallergic.
The SAM VSO Union has successfully restored pre-pandemic employer 403(b) retirement contributions, starting at 1% and increasing to 3% after three years, the union said in a news release. The museum laid off several part-time visitors services employees in 2020, even as it received nearly $5 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans. SAM has applied the change in pension contributions to all staff, the union said.
Before workers began organizing in 2021, the museum’s hourly wage for security guards was $17.69. When the gains take effect in January, wages will have increased by 37% since the organization’s inception. According to the The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculatoran adult without children must earn $28.70 to support themselves in Seattle, and $49.50 for an adult with one child.
“In recent weeks, after 27 months of contract delays by SAM, negotiations have reached a breaking point and employees have had no choice but to take drastic measures.” Josh Davis, who has been a SAM guard for 11 years, wrote in an op-ed Hyperallergic published on November 25.
The union voted to strike in October, Berkbigler said, to push for higher wages, expanded health care benefits, seniority pay and pension adjustments. Berkbigler said the union has “since given up” on expanding health care benefits for now, but the new contract guarantees equivalent or better health benefits for employees even if the museum changes providers.
SAM VSO Union raised more than $28,000 GoFundMe to support its workers during the strike.
The workers also reached a union safety agreement, making the bargaining unit a “union shop,” meaning new safety employees must automatically join the union and pay dues. This will “help the union survive” in the second contract negotiations and establish a concrete relationship with the museum, Berkbigler said.
Scott Stulen, president and CEO of SAM, wrote in a statement shared with Hyperallergic, “This contract addresses the unique working conditions of VSOs and the important services they provide, while maintaining our commitment to workforce equity.”
While the union officially began negotiating with the museum in 2022, SAM security officers first organized in solidarity with the neighboring unhoused community. In 2021, after the museum planned to install bollards to deter unhoused people from entering the museum campus, SAM VSO Union’s predecessor organization SAM Workers Collective was formed to prevent its implementation. They were afraid of the structures, which the union characterized as “hostile architecture,” could promote violence against unhoused individuals living outside the museum.
The group collected 600 signatures on petitions to prevent the museum’s implementation of the facade plan, but failed to deter the bollards. That same year, management contracted an outside security company to patrol the exterior of the museum, the union said. SAM has not yet responded Hyperallergic conditions request for comment regarding an alleged incident of misconduct between a contract security guard and an unhoused woman.
“What we first organized around was the museum’s unilateral decision to implement hostile architecture,” Berkbigler said. The museum’s security officers did that stood as opposed to ‘violent police action’.
This first contract, Berkbigler said, falls short of a living wage and leaves out seniority pay, but it marks a gain in the union’s status at the museum.
“It’s a mix of emotions,” Berkbigler said. “I was a little stunned that anything could happen after all this time.”
