Seattle Art Museum (SAM) security guards reached a tentative agreement with the institution yesterday, December 11, ending a 12-day strike that began on November 29.
The SAM Visitor Service Officer (VSO) Union’s 59 security guards voted overwhelmingly to ratify their first union contract with the museum, securing a raise in base wages from $21.68 to $24.18 that will take effect starting next month. The union’s adoption of the new contract brings an end to over two years of stalled negotiations and a nearly two-week strike.
“When there was no further movement that was going to happen in the bargaining room is when we had to take it to the streets,” Andi Berkbigler, a security guard for over five years, told Hyperallergic.
The SAM VSO Union successfully restored pre-pandemic employer 403(b) retirement contributions, starting at 1% and rising to 3% after three years, the union said in a release. The museum furloughed several part-time visitor service workers in 2020, even though it received almost $5 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans. SAM applied the retirement contributions change to all staff, the union said.
Before workers began organizing in 2021, the museum’s hourly wage for security workers was $17.69. When the gains take effect in January, wages will have increased 37% since the beginning of organizing. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Living Wage Calculator, an adult with no 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 workers have had no choice but to take drastic measures.” Josh Davis, who has been a SAM security guard for 11 years, wrote in an opinion for Hyperallergic published on November 25.
The union voted to strike in October, Berkbigler said, to push for increased wages, expanded healthcare benefits, seniority pay, and retirement matching. 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 to employees even if the museum switches providers.
SAM VSO Union raised more than $28,000 on GoFundMe to support its workers through the strike.
The workers also reached a union-security agreement, making the bargaining unit a “union shop,” meaning that new security hires will have to automatically join the union and pay dues. This will “help the union survive” into its second contract negotiation and establish a concrete relationship with the museum, Berkbigler said.
Scott Stulen, SAM’s Director and CEO, 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 equity across the staff.”
While the union officially started bargaining with the museum in 2022, SAM’s 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 formed to prevent their implementation. They feared the structures, which the union characterized as “hostile architecture,” could promote violence against unhoused individuals living outside the museum.
The group gathered 600 petition signatures to prevent the museum’s execution of the facade plan, but it failed to deter the bollards. That same year, management contracted a third-party security firm to patrol the exterior of the museum, according to the union. SAM has not yet replied to Hyperallergic’s request for comment about an alleged incident of misconduct occurring 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, though, have stood in opposition to “violent policing.”
This first contract, Berkbigler said, falls short of a liveable wage and left 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.”
