MAKING HISTORY
People walk down a flight of stairs in the Carnegie Museum of Art on Friday in Oakland. Museums are closed as part of a statewide COVID-19 shutdown. On Tuesday, workers from Carnegie Museums voted to unionize, joining USW. Story,
Workers from the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh voted Tuesday to form a union, joining the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers union.
The employees, who work at the Andy Warhol Museum and Carnegie Science Center on the North Side and the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History in Oakland, will become part of a 500-member USW unit called the United Museum Workers.
The vote comes about six months after the workers officially began the campaign to unionize in June, shortly after the museums reopened to the public after months of closures due to COVID-19.
Now, the museums have closed their doors once again following a new set of restrictions put in place by state officials last week.
During the first round of the shutdown, more than 600 employees were furloughed from the Carnegie Museum system.
The COVID-19 pandemic helped the organizing effort by bringing attention to health and safety concerns, one union organizer said in a prepared statement.
In addition to a safer work environment, organizers said they are fighting for better pay and benefits, more inclusivity in hiring, greater accessibility, increased transparency and a voice in the museum’s decision-making process.
“Our goal is to build the best, most welcoming and safest museum system for workers and for the people of the Pittsburgh area,” Chloe Deardorff, program presenter at the Carnegie Science Center, said in a prepared statement. “The best way to do that is through collective action. We look forward to sitting down and bargaining a first contract that helps us to reach those goals.”
The United Museum Workers will include fulland part-time employees who perform a variety of tasks, including scientists, educators, art handlers, front desk and administrative staff, gift shop clerks and ushers.