Museum workers at Chicago’s Field Museum went public Thursday with a union campaign they said was driven in part by low wages, high turnover, and a lack of transparency at the museum.
Museum workers at Chicago’s Field Museum went public Thursday with a union campaign they said was driven in part by low wages, high turnover and a lack of transparency at the museum.
Workers at the natural history museum said they plan to unionize with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 under the name Field Museum Workers United. AFSCME represents more than 25,000 library workers and more than 10,000 museum workers nationally, including at the Art Institute of Chicago.“We take pride in what we do,” the Field Museum employees wrote in an open letter signed by more than 60 museum workers.
In their open letter, Field Museum employees said previous attempts to raise their concerns with museum administration had been ignored. They called attention to what they described as low wages, few opportunities for advancement and an overreliance on project-based, grant-funded positions in place of permanent employees. Those issues have led to high turnover at the museum, they said, creating larger workloads for employees there.
Workers at the natural history museum were inspired by the union campaign of employees at the Art Institute of Chicago, the union said in a news release Thursday. Art Institute workers formed the city’s first major museum union when they
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