Cohost Union News

Despite a blatant effort by the Schuylkill Center to bust the union, the Center is now the latest workplace in the Philly Cultural Workers United family! Congrats!

Philly Cultural Workers United, an AFSCME-affiliated union which covers the Phildadelphia Museum of Art, the Penn Museum, and Please Touch Museum—have a new union going into the new year: the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Staff there, who are in a wide variety of positions due to the nature of the Center's work, have formed Schuylkill Center Staff United and are asking for voluntary recognition from the Center this week.

The Schuylkill Center, for those unfamiliar, is a self-described urban environmental education center located in one of Philadelphia's northern peripheries. They do a pretty wide array of things, ranging from environmental education to land stewardship to wildlife rehabilitation; they currently privately steward 365 acres of city land surrounding the Center itself. Most recently they were in the news for 24 acres of that land which they were granted the right to sell off in case of emergency. They intended to do this, but the surrounding community successfully mobilized to keep the land in the Center's possession, which was announced last month.

Hopefully—and optimistically—the Center will quickly recognize the union, as voluntary recognition does tend to be more common among environmental and conservation nonprofits. They're usually progressively-oriented and more receptive to letting their staff collectively bargain with them. However, the bad environmental nonprofits tend to be some of the most vicious union busters. The IWW's experience with unionizing the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the aftermath of that comes to mind as one such example—the organization literally dissolved rather than negotiate a contract and then was charged with a labor violation for doing so. (Although something that extreme is almost certainly not in the cards here.)

Schuylkill Center Staff United has released the following statement talking about what the Center has been up to since I made this post—the answer, mostly, is leaning on union busting consultants and lies about unions:

(You can sign a community letter of support for DAMWU here).

On January 11, and in honor of the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 in Massachusetts, workers at the Denver Art Museum announced their unionization campaign! Branded as DAMWU—Denver Art Museum Workers United—they'll be unionizing with AFSCME. This is also a wall-to-wall union, so the union will comprise approximately 250 people according to Artnet. Of those 250, the union says a supermajority have already signed union cards.

This unionization campaign revolves around five demands, which DAMWU outline in their unionization announcement. These are:

• A base living wage that accounts for experience, tenure, and continuing inflation
• Communication, transparency, democratic oversight and leadership accountability
• Investment in employees through advancement and professional development
• A culture that prioritizes employee and visitor experience over revenue
• Respect and safety of all employees, volunteers, and visitors

They've also requested voluntary recognition, to which Denver Art Museum has not yet responded. In a statement to the Denver Post the museum's spokesperson ambiguously responded that “If unionization is the path [employees] choose, the museum will work within that system.”

Philly Cultural Workers United, an AFSCME-affiliated union which covers the Phildadelphia Museum of Art, the Penn Museum, and Please Touch Museum—have a new union going into the new year: the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. Staff there, who are in a wide variety of positions due to the nature of the Center's work, have formed Schuylkill Center Staff United and are asking for voluntary recognition from the Center this week.

The Schuylkill Center, for those unfamiliar, is a self-described urban environmental education center located in one of Philadelphia's northern peripheries. They do a pretty wide array of things, ranging from environmental education to land stewardship to wildlife rehabilitation; they currently privately steward 365 acres of city land surrounding the Center itself. Most recently they were in the news for 24 acres of that land which they were granted the right to sell off in case of emergency. They intended to do this, but the surrounding community successfully mobilized to keep the land in the Center's possession, which was announced last month.

Hopefully—and optimistically—the Center will quickly recognize the union, as voluntary recognition does tend to be more common among environmental and conservation nonprofits. They're usually progressively-oriented and more receptive to letting their staff collectively bargain with them. However, the bad environmental nonprofits tend to be some of the most vicious union busters. The IWW's experience with unionizing the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the aftermath of that comes to mind as one such example—the organization literally dissolved rather than negotiate a contract and then was charged with a labor violation for doing so. (Although something that extreme is almost certainly not in the cards here.)