Denver Art Museum workers vote to form a union, a first for an art museum in Colorado

Workers at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) voted to form a union on Thursday (7 March), making the institution the first unionised art museum in the state of Colorado as more cultural workers across the country organise in a trend that has accelerated since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Some 67% of workers at the DAM voted to unionise under the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-Cultural Workers United Council 18 (AFSCME Council 18), which is made up of workers in New Mexio and Colorado. The employees, who named themselves Denver Art Museum Workers United (DAMWU), said in a statement that they won the election by a 120 to 59 vote, despite an “intense anti-union campaign” on the part of the museum’s upper management. AFSCME filed more than 12 unfair labour practice charges against the museum on behalf of unit members as a result, the union said.

“Our wall-to-wall union recognises the importance of all of us in making the museum a place where art connects, inspires and empowers,” Kit Bernal, a curatorial assistant at the museum and union member, said in a statement. “I am so honoured to get to work with all of my incredible colleagues across the bargaining unit and the museum to build a better present and future for the DAM.”

Next, the union will bargain with museum management for its first contract, a process that has taken more than a year at several other institutions where workers recently unionised. The DAMWU said in an announcement that the unit plans to address issues like staffing, career advancement, disciplinary processes and fair wages.

“The museum supports employees’ right to unionise and is grateful for all those who voted and exercised their rights in this process,” a museum spokesperson said in a statement. “The museum is committed to bargaining in good faith with the union toward a collective bargaining agreement.”

The employees at the DAM first announced their intentions to unionise in January. In a statement, Trudy Lovato, a gallery host at the museum and co-chair of the union organising committee, said many of her colleagues suffered from food insecurity and general economic anxiety.

“These folks have multiple jobs, roommates, have to worry about getting to work, parking (there’s no employee parking), not to mention the body-stress that comes with many positions, in many departments at our workplace,” Lovato said.

Museum workers across the US have increasingly elected to unionise since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when falling visitor numbers resulted in layoffs and cutbacks. Workers at institutions including the Dia Art Foundation, the Hispanic Society Museum and Library and the Jewish Museum in New York, the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus, and many others have undertaken (and in many cases completed) the process of forming a union.