About 100 employees of the Frick Pittsburgh will be the latest local museum workers to join the United Steelworkers after what the union called an “overwhelming” vote Tuesday.
The new bargaining unit will include gallery attendants, café staff, curators, maintenance and housekeeping workers, groundskeepers, educators and more.
The union said the workers plan to seek a contract addressing “job security, fair wages, health insurance, understaffing, and respect in the workplace.”
“We are the backbone of this institution, and we're excited to finally have a voice in shaping our work environment, our pay, and our benefits,” said John Payne, a groundskeeper at The Frick.
In a statement, the museum said: “We are committed to working in good faith with the union to reach the first Collective Bargaining Agreement and provide all employees with the best possible working environment.”
In joining the USW, Frick workers follow in the footsteps of some 500 workers at the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and more than 60 employees of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, who voted to unionize in April.
Tuesday’s vote has special historical resonance because the museum’s buildings and extensive grounds occupy the former estate of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, who was an outspoken opponent of unions. Frick’s anti-union actions are widely blamed for the deadly 1892 Homestead Steel strike.
Frick sought to break the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. With the support of the mill’s owner, Andrew Carnegie, Frick locked out its workers, brought in scab laborers, and hired a private security force to attempt to subdue the strikers. The strike ended with the union broken and — in an era decades before the right to organize was law — ushered in a long era when industrial workers had virtually no power in the workplace.
Said Payne, “In a way, this is retribution for the workers who died at Homestead.”
The Frick Art Museum, which opened in 1970, was founded by Frick’s daughter, Helen Clay Frick. The complex also includes the Frick family mansion, which opened to the public in 1990; a greenhouse and extensive gardens; and the Car and Carriage Museum.
