SAM VSO Union authorizes strike

Workers at the Seattle Art Museum vote to authorize a strike after 26 months of bargaining

SEATTLE, WA (October 23, 2024) — Seattle Art Museum security workers organized with independent union SAM VSO have voted to authorize a strike by an overwhelming majority. Vote results were announced on social media on Tuesday, with 96% of the workers voting to strike November 29 unless an agreement on a fair contract is reached.

SAM VSO represents the SAM security team: VSOs, or Visitor Service Officers, both part- and full-time. The workers first started bargaining in August of 2022, uniting over concerns about job security, low pay, and being ignored by management.

Photo: SAM VSO via Twitter

But they had been organizing together for more than a year before that, spurred by management’s decision to adopt a policy of “hostile deterrence” towards unhoused individuals living and sleeping near the museum’s downtown location. This policy included hiring an external private security firm. Many VSOs were concerned these choices would result in harm to these unhoused people, and started a petition to pressure management to change course.

Management chose to bring on a private security contractor anyway. Per the union, “within two weeks of this hiring, the SAM Workers Collective’s worst fear came true. A Star Security employee committed gross misconduct, and paid an unhoused man to rob an unhoused woman on SAM property.” After this incident, the Museum terminated the contract with the security firm. But this experience — of calling on management to do the right thing, being ignored, and seeing their fears of harm realized — galvanized the workers to unionize.

Now, after more than two years of bargaining, the union reports that “the museum has only offered proposals on one of our four core demands: wages, seniority, healthcare, and retirement.”

The museum claims to “foster creativity” and “build community” through art. But SAM’s actions towards museum workers paint a different picture, one where a major cultural institution claims progressive bonafides while refusing to pay a living wage to the people in this community that the museum claims to be building.

Photo: SAM VSO via Twitter

SAM VSO is an independent union; when organizing the workers originally planned to join IUPAT Local 116. But the “guard exclusion” clause added to the National Labor Relations Act in 1947 via the Taft-Hartley Act, effectively prohibits security workers and non-security workers from joining together in union. This same issue faced workers at the Tacoma Art Museum when they organized; ultimately, the TAM board chose to recognize the union.

The SAM workers’ options were to seek voluntary recognition from the museum, go independent, or give up. Once SAM refused to recognize the union — a stark contrast to their counterparts in Tacoma — the workers formed SAM VSO to keep their union fight alive.

These hurdles leave SAM VSO without the institutional support many workers have when organizing. As no union dues are collected until a first contract is ratified, the workers are fundraising to cover their legal costs as SAM continues to delay. The union’s next fundraiser is October 29th in Seattle, and donations can be made on the union’s GoFundMe.