SAM VSO Union Strikes on Black Friday After Years of Corporate Misdeeds

I did not shop on Black Friday. Instead, my brother and I went to Day One of the SAM VSO Union strike outside of Seattle Art Museum.

On our way, we went to University Village, where people held a die-in protesting Apple for its funding of genocide and financial support of child labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite it being a common refrain of the privileged, comfortable, and/or apathetic, anyone who says that protests won’t, can’t, or don’t do anything are wrong.

Meaningful change is often slow, and effects come in all shapes and sizes, generating questions and residual displeasure and sympathies alike. The U-Village protestors in particular successfully closed down the Apple Store on the busiest shopping day of the year.

Who comprises the SAM VSO Union, and what could they potentially accomplish with their ongoing strike?

The SAM VSO Union consists of a group of 54 Visitor Service Officers, or VSOs. On Black Friday, they started their strike. Strikes are typically one of the last options a union will exercise to make clear to their employer and the general public that their working conditions are unacceptable and their concerns up till that point have been largely ignored. Before the formation of the SAM VSO Union, there were a series of escalations in organized action against Seattle Art Museum (SAM) leadership and policies.

Drummer marching with striking workers

Martin Brown Photos

One of the SAM VSO’s earliest actions in 2018 included an attempt to bridge gaps between the concerns of workers and museum management—collaborating directly with SAM management to form the VSO Advisory Committee—which turned out to be a wholly unsatisfying arrangement prone to stonewalling from the company. When the COVID pandemic started, SAM stopped every ‘frontline’ worker’s retirement benefits, returning only part of the original benefits in 2021.

Despite the erosion of benefits, those early solidarity efforts had proved themselves at least mildly effective. In December 2021, VSOs got raises across-the-board of nearly 21 percent on average. The SAM VSO union website admits these raises were “big,” but alludes to their purpose being to placate security workers because after all, if they are getting a raise, “[they] don’t need a union.”

Earlier that year, Visitor Service Officers, supportive coworkers, and community members rallied as “Decolonize SAM” (a.k.a. the SAM Workers Collective), and signed a petition to boycott the Seattle Art Museum because of its plans to introduce hostile architecture and hire private security to deter unhoused people from the museum’s downtown location. Decolonize SAM wanted the museum to take a step away from actively policing and criminalizing homelessness by prioritizing harm-reduction and working with local organizations to foster a less classist environment.

Despite significant internal support within the museum, the petition didn’t stop SAM from hiring private security. As a result, one of the three hired private security guards paid one unhoused person to rob another unhoused person. A woman named Sheronda had been living outside the SAM for years when the guard in question paid a man five dollars to steal from her. SAM leadership responded to this incident by summarily firing all three of the guards.

This shines some light on another of the union’s current concerns: job security. At the time, Decolonize SAM expressed dismay that the other two guards were fired despite doing nothing wrong. This incident was not the only time a SAM worker was fired without appropriate cause.

Prominent organizer Aselya Keyes had been working as a VSO at SAM for five years when she was placed on paid leave in March 2022, during which she was investigated. No one would tell her why. She suddenly received multiple complaints in a short period of time, was asked to show encrypted union communications to museum leadership and was denied her request that a union witness be present during company questioning—a violation of her Weingarten rights. She was fired right before the union election.

In May 2022, SAM VSOs were officially an independent union. In 2023, Josh Davis, one of the union’s main organizers and worker at the museum for 11 years, found out that he had cancer. “It’s a common misconception in the workplace today that young people can get away with periods of not being insured,” Davis says in a YouTube video outlining the specific benefits the VSO Union advocates for. “If I had not had health insurance coverage from outside of the museum, I would not have gotten checked out early. If I hadn’t gotten checked out early, that easily could’ve turned into a deadly cancer. And so it really drove home for me the importance of pushing for these benefits,” said Davis. The benefits in question are what the union affectionately refers to as WaSHR: Wages, Seniority, Health Insurance, and Retirement.

Davis wrote a critique about the SAM board of trustees’ rationale for not providing the union the WaSHR benefits they advocate for. According to Davis, the museum’s bargaining representative sent the SAM VSO union an email saying that upkeep of the museum’s properties will need to continue to take precedence (over giving more support to SAM employees).

Davis is quick to show that this excuse sucks; in 2006, SAM workers lost their pension program while then-president Jon Shirley earmarked donations to be used for the creation of display space for his personal Alexander Calder collection. A year later, the massive Olympic Sculpture Park was created. And the museum plans to expand more in the next 5 years.

Armed with the pressing question of how Seattle Art Museum could have $418 million in assets (2023) yet refuse to pay its security officers a living wage, I stepped into the area of sidewalk directly in front of the museum’s main doors, where a group of around 30 people were holding signs, drumming, chanting slogans, marching in a circle, or doing two actions at once. The atmosphere was organized, friendly, and cathartic. During my short visit, I saw about five people cross the picket line.

Speaker addresses crowd of striking workers at SAM / Martin Brown Photos

Josh Davis was the first person I talked to. He told me that just earlier the CEO of the museum had spent a significant amount of time staring at striking employees through the windows from behind the front desk. I got the impression that was awkward. I told Davis I had a few questions for the union, and he got someone who identified themselves as Eddie. Eddie was holding the right sign for the job: “Ask me about my union.” So I did.

Samuel Brown (S): What do you believe a museum should provide to the public? What do you believe the Seattle Art Museum is not providing to the public?

Eddie (E): I mean, it’s the difference between what they’re not providing to their employees and to the public. And right now, [we’re] more focused on what they’re not providing to the employees, specifically the guards, which are part of our union. We have WaSHR, which is just four basic demands that our guards wanted: a wage increase, seniority pay... better healthcare and healthcare for part-timers and retirement. Another thing we want is union security. They’re very strict on keeping the no-strike clause there. And we want to make it an agency shop so we could still survive after this three-year contract.

(S): Tell me more about this no-strike clause.

(E): It’s just something they put in the contract. If we sign the contract, we cannot strike. So whenever our three-year contract is over, we [wouldn’t] be able to [strike] if we agreed to it. They gave us an official offer. We rejected it and they left the table and said they gave us till December 20 to accept that offer. The same offer we rejected by 89%.

(S): Tell me about your job security concerns. What can your union do to increase job security?

(E): I’m not on the bargaining team, but... in the contract there’s included steps for firing or for discipline. Before in the contract it’s just up to [SAM]. And we don’t want to have that. [We want] it so it’s not just at a whim they’ll fire people.

(S): I heard about a member of your union that was... A bunch of complaints were sent out against them in a short period of time, and they were fired.

(E): That worker was a big part of making this union. So it was before we became official. So that's one of the things they just found a way to...It's a union bust effort. They find a way to get rid of that worker.

[There’s] Seniority pay as well. At the moment, for just regular guard[s]: If you've been here a day, you've been here 10 years, 15 years—we all get paid the same. So that's just something else we're really trying to get. At least anything. Any counteroffer.

(S): The Board of Trustees still refuses to meet with your union. You confronted them outside when they were at a meeting, you guys played music. How often is the board present at your workplace?

(E): It's up to them, whenever they want to show up. Maybe now and then they have a meeting. But that's on their time. We make contact just through emails. So the only time we're able to see them is when they just show up for an event. And that's what we did that day when they had their annual meeting at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. That's the only time we're able to see them. So not often.

(S): A sizable amount of donors support your union as well. What can be done to change the way that these donations are allocated?

(E): I can't give you specific details on how donation money is allocated. Something we want is for them to at least share some of the donations with their actual workers.

(S): Rather than, as you guys have said before, expanding the museum?

(E): Yes. A lot of them, they donate the money to those who lend some of the art pieces here. They kind of keep it with them. [They’ll] have two back-to-back exhibitions on their own personal art that they send to the museum. And they prefer for allocation to be supporting that exhibit instead of their workers.

(S): I heard that the family of Thaddeus Mosley came and made a donation to the union. What was that like?

(E): It was just really nice to see the actual artists in the museum support us. We have gotten support from two separate artists as well at least verbally for the union who have had either art in here or exhibits in the museum. So it's definitely good to see the actual artists support us.

(S): What can people do to help the union right now?

(E): If you go to our webpage, we do have a supporters page. There's a pre-made email that they send on their behalf, and it goes to the board and it goes to the CEO. They can also donate, there's a donate button, so we will keep on being able to be out here and strike and last long enough so we could get an actual contract that would benefit us.

Samuel shakes hands with striking worker / Martin Brown Photos

On Instagram, Eddie can be seen holding a statement of support that reads “I support the SAM VSO Union because I am a person with experience and dedication, not just a number.”