Pandemic-induced layoffs, furloughs, and pay reductions have accelerated museum workers’ ambition to unionize, organizers and advocates said. The campaigns are a relatively new phenomena in a sector that’s historically eschewed such measures and look to be gaining momentum.
Conversations around equity and compensation spurred an upswell in organizing drives just before the Covid-19 pandemic. When museums shut down, in some places firing workers at the center of the unionization efforts, organizers worried the wider campaign was in peril.
Instead, the contagion’s impact on workers propelled more widespread support for organizing, said Maida Rosenstein, president of the United Automobile Workers Local ...