SAAM

After a 12-day strike, the 60 or so guards at the Seattle Art Museum and Capitol Hill’s Seattle Asian Art Museum have secured a contract agreement. The deal, finalized last week, delivers a wage boost from $21.68 to $23.25 per hour and guarantees 4% annual raises from 2025 through 2027 — a hard-fought victory for workers determined to improve their livelihoods while safeguarding some of the city’s premier cultural institutions.

It is a small victory but an important win for a small group left out of protections for their peers that was able to organize — and win — at a smaller scale.

To get there, the security workers had to overcome reluctance from museum leadership — and decades-old labor law.

“There is a law that the union believes the museum exploited to avoid recognizing us under that umbrella union,” Tahlia Segura, a part-time Visitor Service Officer and teaching artist in the museum’s education department who serves as the union representative, said.

The root of the problem was the 1947 National Labor Relations Act which was used to restrict the security workers from joining the broader union protecting museum workers. Under the act, security guards can be excluded from bargaining due to their position as potential “agents of management” and have often been treated as supervisors, meaning they were not allowed to unionize.

The solution was to form a separate agreement.

In 2022, the SAM security workers chose to form an independent union. While this approach presented unique challenges, such as limited resources and the absence of external union infrastructure, it also tied its members closer to the effort.

The SAM VSO union’s first contract marks a significant step forward, but the group says it is just the beginning. The push for equitable benefits, improved pay structures, and better support for part-time employees continues. “We know it’s possible. It’s just a matter of keeping up the fight,” Segura said.

SAM leadership, meanwhile, is celebrating the agreement despite the challenging path..

“Throughout the bargaining process, SAM has been committed to reaching an agreement that reflects our values, demonstrates our dedication to our people, and enables the museum to fulfill its mission,” a statement from SAM on the agreement reads. “The deal we reached accomplishes those goals, including market-leading wages for union members and robust benefits that recognize the unique services provided by our colleagues.”

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