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A whopping 96% of staff at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art voted in favor of a union, calling for higher pay and “increased transparency.”
Staff at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced a vote in favor of unionizing on December 17, 2025. (photo courtesy LACMA United)
LOS ANGELES — Workers at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) have voted to unionize with AFSCME District Council 36, the new unit announced yesterday, December 17. In October, LACMA staff expressed their intention to form a union, LACMA United, to represent over 300 workers in departments across the museum, including curatorial, administration, education, and preparation.
In an October 29 missive to the museum board, staff cited “fairer compensation, expanded benefits, and increased transparency” among their demands, adding that salaries had failed to keep up with the rising cost of living in LA.
“We are so ecstatic,” Jayne Manuel, a program administrator for Collections Management at LACMA, told Hyperallergic. “Nearly all of our bargaining unit turned out. It was near unanimous, with 96% voting for the union.”
Museum leadership did not voluntarily recognize the union by the group’s November 5 deadline, thus prompting the vote.
Workers are seeking “fairer compensation, expanded benefits, and increased transparency” at the museum.
“Instead, LACMA pushed for an election and leaned into union avoidance tactics,” the December 17 announcement said. “These actions ceased after Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis sent a letter to LACMA in support of its staff.”
In her letter, Solis expressed her support for “every worker’s legal right to organize and join a union, without fear of retaliation or interference from management.”
LACMA now joins several other LA museums whose workers have unionized under AFSCME in recent years, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and the La Brea Tar Pits.
“The museum is committed to working collaboratively with DC 36 and staff in a spirit of mutual respect, open dialogue, and shared dedication to the museum’s mission, honoring the will of the majority of voters,” a spokesperson for LACMA told Hyperallergic.
LACMA is the largest museum in the western United States, with over 150,000 works in its collection, and draws almost 1 million annual visitors. It is currently in the final stages of a $720 million redevelopment of its campus. In yesterday’s statement, the new union stressed that “ensuring the stability of staff should be equally crucial to the future of the museum.”
The next steps for the union will be to form a bargaining committee and survey the bargaining unit to determine what issues will be addressed in their contract.
“As you can imagine, it’s been a hectic time since the union went public,” Manuel said. “But we don’t want to delay this. After the holidays, we’ll hit the ground running.”
