Safety employees on the Seattle Museum of Artwork (SAM) ended their 11-day strike strike final week, with an amazing majority (98%) of unionized staff voting to ratify their first contract with the museum. The strike, which started on 29 November, concerned between 60 and 70 full- and part-time employees unionised because the SAM Customer Service Officer (VSO) Union.
The brand new contract took impact instantly, leading to base wages rising from $21.68 to $24.18. Employees returned to work on Wednesday (11 December) and, based on Marcela Soto Ramirez, the SAM VSO Union’s lead, they “have been attending to work usually since then”.
Different options of the brand new contract embrace reinstating retirement contributions that had ceased on the top of the Covid-19 pandemic. often called employer 403(b) retirement contributions, they started at 1% and can go as excessive as 3% after three years. The contract additionally stipulates that employees are assured equal or higher healthcare advantages, even when the museum adjustments suppliers or plans, for the lifetime of the contract.
“General, it’s a nice win,” Soto Ramirez says. “We stood collectively and gained advantages again for ourselves whereas additionally restoring the pre-Covid retirement coverage for everybody within the museum.”
“This contract addresses the distinctive working situations of VSOs and the essential providers they supply whereas sustaining our dedication to fairness throughout the workers,” Scott Stulen, the museum’s director and chief government, stated in an announcement offered to The Artwork Newspaper.
One other side of the brand new contract consists of a union safety settlement, which means that the bargaining unit is now thought-about a union store so all future VSO workers which are employed will probably be required to robotically be a part of the union and pay dues.
“The union is happy with this success. After an extended battle for this primary contract, we stored our power and focus,” Soto Ramirez says. “The bargaining staff labored laborious for this deal and the members stood agency, backing them up in a strike that lastly, due to the employees and group efforts, moved the museum and empowered folks. All of us have seen and skilled the way it feels to battle and win collectively, and that can go away a mark on everybody.”
Whereas the union was capable of acquire floor on many key points, it additionally needed to compromise on sure calls for. The union and museum couldn’t come to an settlement on livable wages and seniority pay, for example.
The brand new contract was laborious gained for the union, which had been bargaining for shut to twenty-eight months—basically because it shaped in 2022. Based on labor knowledge compiled by Museums Transferring Ahead, the typical size of time for a union to succeed in its first contract is 17 months.
