Nearly three years after their unionization effort began during the height of COVID and eighteen months after beginning their contract negotiations, approximately 530 employees across four Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh (Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Carnegie Science Center and The Andy Warhol Museum) have finally won their first contract!
The big headliner of this agreement is that every worker at the four museums will now be paid a living wage—the minimum wage, thanks to the agreement, is now $16.00/hr, up from $12.00/hr.1 Workers who receive less than a 5% pay increase from raising the base rate of pay appear to separately be guaranteed a raise equivalent to 5%, meaning all employees should see a significant pay increase. There will also now be cost-of-living adjustments for the other three years of the four-year contract, and these will be equivalent to either raises of 8.75% over the three years or raises of 2.75% per year.
All workers at the four museums who work more than 7 hours on shift now have two paid breaks of up to 15 minutes, and a 30 minute unpaid lunch break. If they work more than 5 but less than 7 hours, they get one paid break and the lunch break. They've also won a clause to refuse any unsafe work; the clause also provides for any necessary safety equipment to do such a job.
Part-time workers (workers scheduled to less than 30 hours a week) and occasional workers (intermittent and relief workers that average less than 29 hours a week) also get some new benefits under the agreement too. They get the same retirement benefits. They can now accrue up to 80 paid sick leave hours, compared to the previous 40-hour cap; they also now get paid jury duty leave. Part-time employees gained two new floating holidays per year.
Congratulations!
-
And when the union began organizing almost 3 years ago, it was in the $8/hr range!