More than two years after announcing plans to organize, workers at the Walters Art Museum finally have a labor union.
During an election Thursday, the employees voted 60 to 5 to organize under the auspices of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the union known as AFSCME announced in a news release.
The election was conducted by the American Arbitration Association. The 65 employees who cast ballots account for 81% of the 80 Walters employees eligible to vote in the election.
“I will never forget this moment,” said Garrett Stralnic, a Walters gallery officer, in the news release. “It takes a certain kind of bravery to question the status quo and a certain kind of courage to envision a more inclusive future where we can collectively advocate for ourselves.”
An unsigned, brief statement posted on the museum’s website said the election was conducted from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday.
“The next step in the process is for the union and the museum to engage in the collective bargaining process, which the museum anticipates will begin in the near future,” the statement said.
A group of staff members calling themselves Walters Workers United announced April 30, 2021, that they planned to organize to address such issues as pay equity, workplace safety and career advancement. That began a long impasse between the workers and the museum’s administrators and trustees that it took a lawsuit and the introduction of bills into the state legislature to resolve. (The bills were withdrawn once the union election was scheduled.)
At stake was not whether the workers could form a union — museum director Julia Marciari-Alexander said from the first that she supported her employees’ legal right to engage in collective bargaining — but whether staff members would be allowed to form one so-called “wall-to-wall” union of all eligible employees as they preferred, or two smaller and presumably less powerful bargaining units: one for security guards and one for everyone else.
Ultimately, the employees prevailed; the new union will include staff members ranging from security guards to curators to conservation staff to gift shop employees.
The Walters is the third group of Baltimore cultural workers to organize since the coronavirus pandemic touched off a wave of unionization nationwide. Last year, employees of the Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Baltimore Museum of Art voted to begin collective bargaining under AFSCME.
Associate registrar Will Hayes said in the news release that as a Walters employee for the past 10 years, “I know firsthand just how many people it takes to make a museum work. It takes all of us.
“The Walters is one of Baltimore’s treasures and strengthening our workers means strengthening our community.”
