Oakland Museum of California workers announced Wednesday that they are seeking to form a union. The museum staff said they hope to join the American Federation of State, Council, and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, a national union that represents 1.4 million workers, including Bay Area-based chapters of University of California and Oakland Unified staff.
“We’re organizing in pursuit of affordable healthcare for all of the museum’s workers, pay commensurate with the cost of living in the Bay Area, and transparency and collaboration in decision-making,” said Linds Young, a learning, experience, and programming developer at OMCA.
The Museum Workers say a majority of members of their proposed bargaining unit—called OMCA Workers United—have signed cards in favor of forming a union.
“We hope that the museum sees the incredible benefit of this union to our collective work and grants us voluntary recognition,” the staff wrote in a public letter.
OMCA’s management told The Oaklandside that they have received notification from museum staff about their desire to form a union.
“The request and associated documents are currently being reviewed by OMCA management, Board of Trustees, and legal counsel,” museum leaders said in an emailed statement. “Management shares many of the same goals expressed in the union notification of fostering internal trust, improving transparency, further advancing equity, and holding us all accountable to our commitment to anti-racism and social cohesion. OMCA looks forward to continuing with conversations with OMCAWU and Union representatives as more information is received and reviewed.”
Workers at museums and other cultural institutions have been increasingly seeking union representation in recent years. Employees of at least 30 museums in the US were in the process of forming unions in 2021, according to the Washington Post.
Although no OMCA staff currently belong to a union, if successful, the new union drive would not be the first time museum staff were organized.
The museum used to be a city department, meaning museum workers were city employees who were represented by the same unions that represent most other city staff—SEIU Local 1021 and IFPTE Local 21.
Starting in 1989, a foundation was set up to financially support the museum. This grew over time and by 2006, the Oakland Museum of California Foundation was providing roughly half of OMCA’s total budget of $13 million. Some foundation funding was used to hire staff along with paying for programs and renovations.
This “public-private partnership” in which the city and the foundation both paid for and co-managed the museum came to an end in 2011. The financial crisis and Great Recession’s impact on Oakland forced the city to slash its budget. One cost savings was the museum, which city leaders decided to privatize. The 44 museum workers employed by the city were laid off. The city also leased OMCA’s buildings and land to the foundation, which took over full management of the institution.
Some of OMCA’s laid-off city employees were rehired by the foundation, but they received lower pay and benefits and no longer belonged to a union. The city later paid a $3.1 million settlement to some of these workers after an arbitrator found that their jobs had been wrongfully outsourced.
