Denver Art Museum workers have voted to unionize, citing pay and management transparency as leading reasons for organizing.
DENVER—About a month after Trudy Lovato started her job as a gallery host at the Denver Art Museum in 2023, she says she realized some of her coworkers were experiencing food and economic insecurity.
“I noticed that people weren’t able to pack a lunch or replace their shoes—things like that,” she says.
Nearly a year later, employees of Colorado’s largest art museum have voted to unionize and join AFSCME Cultural Workers United. They are now awaiting bargaining with DAM’s upper management, which the union claims has committed illegal labor practices amid the organizing period. The final vote, completed earlier this month, was 120 in favor to fifty-nine opposed to forming the wall-to-wall union, which will represent more than 200 employees across museum departments.
AFSCME International Union boasts representing more cultural workers than any other union in the nation with 10,000 museum employees at ninety-one institutions. On March 12, 2024, the same day as the DAM’s vote came to a close, Colorado’s Jefferson County Public Library System also voted to join AFSCME Cultural Workers United.
Lovato, who has a degree in art history, theory, and criticism, makes $19 per hour—71 cents above Denver’s minimum wage—and says it wouldn’t be possible to live on the earnings if it weren’t for a secondary job.
“While the DAM gives me the opportunity to flex my art knowledge muscles, I am able to supplement my income with substitute teaching,” she says.
Curatorial assistant Kit Bernal says she and her colleagues want to see pay addressed in addition to more transparency from the institution’s leaders.
“Compensation is not keeping in line with inflation,” Bernal says. “It doesn’t take into account seniority or expertise. It’s not really enough to live on in Denver, no matter what role you’re in, really.”
“Then we look at things like transparency and communication, like how much we know about the decisions that institutional leadership is making that affects our workplace and how much is shared about how the museum is running and why these decisions are being made the way they are,” she continues. “These are things that have huge effects on our day-to-day.”
The DAM is part of a growing number of museums and cultural organizations that have unionized. More than thirty museums across the United States are at various stages of organizing. New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim Museum, as well as Meow Wolf Denver, are among the institutions that have already unionized.
Bernal says there is a persistent narrative that museums and nonprofit organizations are much different work environments than those typically associated with unions and so it doesn’t make sense to organize.
“But ultimately, we are doing this because we have hope that it can be a better work environment, that it can be somewhere that pays us enough to live, and has opportunities for us to advance and really showcase and apply our passion, knowledge, and expertise,” she says. “I’m hugely hopeful… and to see this happening all across the nation and to be the very first art museum in Colorado is such an honor and point of pride.”
In a February 2024 claim to the National Labor Relations Board, ASFCME New Mexico and Colorado Council 18 alleged that DAM management sought to chill unionization efforts.
In a series of more than a dozen charges, the union says management modified the employee handbook, instructed employees with “lead” in their title to join a management training where “all employees were told they were ineligible to participate in a unionization,” and “interrogated” a staff member about their union activity on social media.
A DAM spokesperson disputed the filing’s claims.
“We can assure you that the museum respects the legal right of employees to unionize and would not interfere with that right, or violate the law, in any way,” the statement says. “The museum will respond to the filing and follow any required next steps with the NLRB. The museum will always support every staff member’s right to have their voice heard and we are committed to negotiating in good faith with the union to develop a Collective Bargaining Agreement.”
In January 2024, the museum voluntarily rejected the organization of Denver Art Museum Workers United, forcing the organizing committee to file with the NLRB and hold a vote. Museum management told The Colorado Sun that they “support the idea of an election because doing so enables all eligible employees to have their voices heard and to participate in the unionization decision-making process.”
In the days since winning the election, Lovato says she’s already seen an improvement in morale among her colleagues, adding that she believes the move to unionize will benefit visitors to the museum, too.
“When people feel valued, and when they feel heard—and I mean, valued on a moral level and a financial level, physically, emotionally, all of those things—they tend to be happy and higher functioning in general,” she says. “I believe that the community and the public at large will have a better experience coming to our museum when they’re met with workers who are more contented and feeling less financially insecure.”
