Seattle Art Museum union wins vote

The Seattle Art Museum officially has a large-scale union.

A large majority of workers, 94%, voted Wednesday to form the Seattle Art Museum Workers United. The vote was conducted by the National Labor Relations Board and included employees from all SAM locations: downtown, the Seattle Asian Art Museum and the Olympic Sculpture Park.

More than 100 Seattle Art Museum employees working across over 20 front- and back-end departments, including marketing, operations, visitor experience, curatorial, education, development and other departments, announced their intent to unionize last month. It was the latest effort in a movement of labor organizing at museums and fine arts institutions around the country that has grown over the last six years.

Workers at SAM have long dealt with stagnant wages, dangerous working conditions and high turnover, leading to a lack of institutional knowledge and concerns regarding artifact safety," a news release from the union said. "SAMWU members feel that their expertise is ignored, hindering the programming that SAM can provide to visitors and leading to a rotating workforce that loses institutional knowledge as each worker leaves."

Organizing, union members believe, will help give workers more say in museum decision-making in hopes that museum leadership will "utilize their expertise when SAM considers operational changes," according to the release.

"Our employees have always been our greatest asset," said Emily Haight, SAM's director of public relations and strategic partnerships, in an email on Thursday. "We look forward to sitting down with SAMWU leadership to begin negotiating in good faith a fair and sustainable collective bargaining agreement."

Every group of employees has unique needs, and we approach every conversation with a fresh perspective. Our goal is always to reach resolutions that provide clarity and stability for our staff as efficiently as possible, while ensuring we remain responsible stewards of the museum's mission and future. This work is a priority and we look forward to next steps."

The vote follows a flurry of organizing at renowned museums like the Whitney, Guggenheim and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; major fine arts institutions in Boston, Philadelphia and Portland have also unionized.

SAM's security staff formed a union in May 2022 and, after more than two years of bargaining and a 12-day strike, agreed on a contract in late 2024 for its 60 or so members.

This union is much larger: NLRB data shows there were 136 eligible voters. In total, there were 10 challenged ballots, 97 votes for unionization and six votes against.

Material from The Seattle Times archives was used in this report.

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This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 6:34 AM.