Why Are Union Members So Dissatisfied? Making Sense of the Union Data in Museums Moving Forward’s 2025 Data Study
June 23, 2026
Amanda Tobin Ripley
Museums Moving Forward (MMF) recently released the second iteration in their series of Data Studies, offering vital, quantitative insights into the state of work in art museums. Their 2025 Data Study found that “a larger proportion of union members are dissatisfied than art museum workers overall, with gaps between the workers ranging from 2% up to 23%.” Why should this be the case, when unions have been shown again and again to improve wages and working conditions?1
I want to offer some observations of the bigger picture, and weave together data from: MMF’s 2025 Data Study, MMF’s Art Museum Unions Index, MMF’s Museum Union Contracts & Equity Study Group, my independent dissertation research conducted at The Ohio State University,2 and comparable data from other industries to try and make sense of this surprising finding. Overall, my analysis supports the data from researcher Patrice Laroche’s meta-study of union member dissatisfaction, from which she concludes succinctly that “dissatisfaction can’t be blamed on the union.”3
It’s necessary to acknowledge one of the biggest challenges in analyzing the effects of labor unions on museum workplaces: a general lack of data. The majority of unions in private, nonprofit art museums are new, as 64% were established in 2019 or later.4 We don’t know the duration of workers’ dissatisfaction and therefore whether it predates these union drives. MMF’s 2023 Data Study did not include union-related questions, so we don’t yet have longitudinal data on how unions have affected measures of workplace culture and career satisfaction.
Here are five observations I offer to MMF’s audiences:
Observation #1: A generational shift is underway in museums. Unions are part of it.
In MMF’s Executive Summary of the 2025 Data Study, they note that “The art museum workforce is undergoing a generational shift, with 63% of workers now Millennial or Gen Z (compared to 54% in 2023).” This generational shift in the museum workforce tracks with the growth in union membership among all workers under the age of 45. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 2025 union membership among workers under 45 “increased by 428,000, compared with an increase of 35,000” among workers 45 and older (a ratio of more than 12%).5 One contributing factor is that under US private-sector labor law, managers (classified as those who have hiring and firing power) cannot be represented by the same union as those they supervise; as people age, they often progress in their careers and then get more managerial responsibility, which may also skew union membership younger. MMF’s Data Study also found higher rates of dissatisfaction among entry-level, associate-level, and Gen Z workers; those who, in other words, are more likely to be union members.
The most compelling reason for union membership among these generational demographics is simple: they entered the workforce amid some of the bleakest economic conditions in decades. The media covers this plight extensively, detailing how the expanding wealth gap, the housing crisis, rising student debt, unemployment rates, and skyrocketing inflation disproportionately affect younger generations. Just a small sample of recent headlines include:
“‘It Feels Like There’s No Jobs’”6
“It’s Still Not OK, Boomer: Younger Americans Are Flailing—And Mad as Hell”7
“Millennials Are Realizing the Job Market Doesn’t Care About Burnout”8
“Millennials Had It Bad Financially, but Gen Z May Have It Worse”9
“The Entry-Level Job Market Is the Worst It’s Been in 37 Years. Stop Blaming Gen Z”10
“Young Adults Are Getting Used to Living on a Financial Cliff”11
In other words, there’s good reason to be dissatisfied at work, and these conditions are exacerbated for workers of color and queer and nonbinary workers—whom MMF found are more likely to be Gen Z and tend to have higher rates of dissatisfaction as well. In what is likely not a coincidence, younger generations also demonstrate higher approval of labor unions: 77% of workers under the age of 34 express approval for unions, compared to only 66% of workers over 55 years old.12
Observation #2: Unions are more common in larger museums—where workers are more likely to be dissatisfied.
The Data Study found that workers at larger museums are, on the whole, more dissatisfied than at small museums, despite having higher pay. The Data Study reports that nonunion museum workers only earn 78% of what their unionized peers earn; meanwhile, the Contracts & Equity Study Group found that 100% of new union contracts immediately improved wages for their workers. Meanwhile, in the Index, we noted that “45% of private nonprofit art museums with unions have annual operating budgets of more than $20 million.” This number rises to 68% when including all art museums with annual operating budgets greater than $10 million.13
In my dissertation research, I found that the desire to have a greater voice in decision-making was one of the top four reasons for organizing a union, alongside issues of pay equity, health and safety concerns, and transparency/accountability. The 2025 Data Study found that “A significantly higher proportion of workers in small museums (48%) believe that they have a voice in decision-making compared to those in large museums (30%) ….” As anyone who has been involved in labor organizing can attest, unions are just as much about dignity on the job and having a voice in the workplace and in the organization as they are about concrete demands like improved wages.14
The struggle for more democratic decision-making in the museum workplace is often the most contentious part of a union campaign. In the words of one worker-organizer and research participant, “It was those things that didn’t actually cost money, that would have actually been free, that were absolutely the hardest things to push for [in contract negotiations].” We noted this tension in the Contracts & Equity Study Group, observing that despite new labor-management committees at 95% of museums, not one contract to date has been able to secure worker representation at the board level. This is to the detriment of the field: expanding the capacity of workers to collectively and actively participate in decision-making—what’s known as worker voice15—leads to clear and concrete social benefits. An increase in worker voice and decision-making ability leads to positive effects on mental and physical health,16 and union engagement often generates greater civic engagement. It’s been shown that union members have greater voter turnout.17 The good news is that MMF’s Data Study affirms that 65% of union members believe that the union has had an overall positive impact on having a voice in decision-making.
Observation #3: Unionizing is often a crash course in systemic exploitation under capitalism, in the workplace and more broadly.
Many museum workers describe organizing as a learning process. We have, for the most part, been socialized to consider ourselves museum professionals, rather than museum workers, especially in a field that has historically low union rates.18 But organizing provides hands-on lessons in labor history and law, highlighting legal protections that may go ignored;19 how the language of passion is used as an excuse not to compensate workers fairly,20 even amidst extraordinarily expensive renovations and expansions;21 and that it is organized labor that has fought for the basic workplace rights we have and may take for granted today.22 In the shift from professional to worker, from unorganized to union, many museum workers gain the language needed to understand their working conditions as exploitative—yes, even in the nonprofit sector.
The unionization process can also expose some internal conflicts of interest in the museum. In spite of stated claims to be a workplace that acts like a “family,” museum leadership often responds to unionization in ways that expose contrary interests that drive their decision-making. Workers describe dehumanizing and antagonizing responses to unionization and contract proposals. To date there have been 97 Unfair Labor Practice charges filed against art museums since the start of this wave of organizing in 2019,23 alleging that museums have violated labor law. Several museums have contracted notorious (and outrageously expensive) union-avoidance law firms, including all of the firms on the list of prominent anti-union law firms from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC): Jackson Lewis, Kauff McGuire & Margolis, Littler Mendelson, Ogletree Deakins, and Proskauer Rose.24 Museums are therefore contributing to the cumulative estimated $1.7 billion spent on union-avoidance legal fees every year in the US, at firms whose hourly attorney fees can reach up to $1,900.25 Union-avoidant employers regularly seek to weaken new unions by delaying proceedings in bureaucratic quagmires that are designed to undermine workers’ confidence in the union, including by challenging worker eligibility, a practice which has been rampant across museums in response to unionization drives.26
Some testimonies from individual workers provide additional context: one of my research participants shares that the museum’s legal counsel rejected their living wage proposal on the grounds that “Just because you work at a museum in New York City doesn’t mean that you should be entitled to be able to live in the city.” Others share experiences of patronizing dismissals of the union campaign and hearing disparaging comments about individual outspoken union members during all-staff meetings, as this participant’s experience demonstrates: “Our director would sit there and read comments that I had made, or that some of my colleagues had made to newspapers, which were all very professional and above board, but they would twist them, and poke holes in them and make fun of us … It’s quite difficult to sit there for upwards of an hour, having your character brought into question in front of people you respect and care about.” Workers also learn more about one another through unionization, which includes hearing about difficult working conditions and even abuses they may not have known about beforehand. As one research participant summarizes, organizing was “a revelatory process for me personally and professionally” that changed how they saw themselves, the leaders at their institution, and the museum sector as a whole. Such experiences were not only traumatic for the workers involved, they also revealed new frontiers of institutional dysfunction.
Finally, unionizing teaches workers about their rights as workers and that they don’t have to simply accept the status quo—topics not typically covered in art history bachelor’s programs, internship curricula, and other traditional museum career pathways.
Put simply, it’s hard to come out of these kinds of experiences without feeling more frustrated. And more motivated to take action.
Observation #4: Museum unions are ambitious. Change is slow.
Another reason that workers may be dissatisfied has to do with the fact that museum unions are very ambitious—and big change takes time. Many research participants in my dissertation expressed frustration with having to sacrifice some of their more ambitious demands in order to secure the basics in their initial contracts.27 We documented in the Index that the average time to ratify a first contract at a museum is 549 days, which is 84 days longer than the current US average.28 That’s almost two years of negotiating in the face of union-busting and resistance, before any changes and protections are enacted.29 There is a lot of pressure to achieve organizing goals, but museum workers recognize that unions are a long-term investment in change,30 not a magic wand.
Many unionizing workers frame their organizing as an act of love for museums, and for their potential to act as transformative, life-affirming forces in service of a more just society. To that end, many museum workers want to change not only top-down, hierarchical, inequitable workplace cultures of museums, but also help collectively shape decolonial, antiracist, and feminist futures. As we saw in the Contracts & Equity Study Group, museum unions are enacting policies around parental leave, diversity training, bilingual pay,31 instituting protections for transgender colleagues and freedom of speech,32 looking towards examples from other sectors in which older and active unions leverage their bargaining power to support community interests (known in the labor world as “bargaining for the common good”33). Beyond contract gains, museum workers are also actively building coalitions in support of a free Palestine and against ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement).34 This brings me back to my original caveat: while there have been immediate and significant gains in unionized museums, there is a long way to go in building the museums many unionizing workers imagine.
Observation #5: The data also shows that museum unions help workers find and forge meaningful community.
It’s vital to emphasize that although unionized museum workers demonstrate higher levels of dissatisfaction than nonunion workers in the Data Study, they also overwhelmingly describe their union as having a positive effect on interpersonal connections. MMF’s Data Study shows that 64% of union members report that the union has had a positive impact on their relationships with their colleagues. This is despite the historically siloed structure of museum workplaces, with little interaction between departments (this estrangement is particularly strong in terms of the divide between front-of-house and back-of-house workers), and departments often assume competitive and even adversarial positions in environments where funding is scarce.35 As Beyond Neutrality reflects in their recent report on unionization in the cultural sector, “Unionization transforms culture, not just contracts,” with immense potential for the public good.36
Union organizing requires workers to actively and regularly build consensus through democratic structures. Wall-to-wall organizing is becoming the norm in the sector, meaning that workers from across all eligible departments work together to form a single bargaining unit, identifying demands that support the common interests of visitor services workers, registrars, curators, educators, custodians, gift shop attendants, fundraisers, librarians, and beyond. Museum unions are not only working together to negotiate contracts, they’re also showing up at other workplaces’ picket lines in solidarity,37 coordinating mutual aid drives for workers in need,38 and even holding book clubs39 and happy hours.40 This kind of intentional community building counteracts our increasingly atomized social worlds, and is desperately needed.
Looking at all of these combined data points, I read the 2025 Data Study’s data point on union members’ dissatisfaction relative to non-union members as an indicator that workers who have recently unionized simply have more cause to be dissatisfied. And while unions demonstrate the potential to transform working conditions in the sector, this kind of work takes time. As this movement continues to grow and build collective power, they will continue to work towards their ambitious aims. Watch this space with me.
Endnotes
[1] Michael Baker, Yosh Halberstam, Kory Kroft, Alexandre Mas, and Derek Messacar, The Impact of Unions on Wages in the Public Sector: Evidence from Higher Education, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2025, https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32277/w32277.pdf; “Unions and Labor Standards,” Economic Policy Institute, 2026, https://www.epi.org/research/unions-and-labor-standards/.
[2] Amanda Tobin Ripley, “‘Another World Is Possible’: Liberatory Unionism in the U.S. Art Museum Labor Movement,” (PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2025), http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1742981340549331.
[3] Patrice Laroche, “Research Shows Unionized Workers Are Less Happy, but Why?,” Labor, Harvard Business Review, August 30, 2017, https://hbr.org/2017/08/research-shows-unionized-workers-are-less-happy-but-why.
[4] As of June 15, 2026. For up-to-date data, see: https://museumsmovingforward.com/research/projects/union-organizing/spotlight-contemporary-union-movement.
[5] Celine McNicholas, Margaret Poydock, and Heidi Shierholz, “Workers’ Resolve Drives Increase in Unionization in 2025,” Economic Policy Institute, February 18, 2026, https://www.epi.org/publication/workers-resolve-drives-increase-in-unionization-in-2025/.
[6] Adrian J. Rivera, Kristen Soltis Anderson, and Katherine Miller, “‘It Feels Like There’s No Jobs’: 12 Gen Z Voters on the U.S. Economy,” The New York Times, March 19, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/03/19/opinion/focus-group-gen-z-jobs.html.
[7] J. Oliver Conroy, “It’s Still Not OK, Boomer: Younger Americans Are Flailing—And Mad as Hell,” The Guardian, December 7, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/07/boomer-millennial-gen-z-housing.
[8] Jasmine Browley, “Millennials Are Realizing the Job Market Doesn’t Care About Burnout,” Forbes, March 31, 2026, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasminebrowley/2026/03/31/millennials-are-realizing-the-job-market-doesnt-care-about-burnout/.
[9] Abha Bhattarai and Federica Cocco, “Millennials Had It Bad Financially, but Gen Z May Have It Worse,” The Washington Post, June 23, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/22/gen-z-millennials-debt-inflation/.
[10] Janelle Jones and Nia Law, “The Entry-Level Job Market Is the Worst It’s Been in 37 Years. Stop Blaming Gen Z,” Fortune, March 21, 2026, https://fortune.com/2026/03/21/entry-level-jobs-gen-z-not-their-fault/.
[11] J. J. McCorvey and Brian Cheung, “Young Adults Are Getting Used to Living on a Financial Cliff,” NBC News, February 18, 2024, https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/millennials-gen-z-financial-cliff-saving-less-spending-rcna138004.
[12] Aurelia Glass, “Explaining Young Workers’ Support for Unions,” Center for American Progress, October 29, 2024, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/explaining-young-workers-support-for-unions/.
[13] As of June 15, 2026. For up-to-date data, see: https://museumsmovingforward.com/research/projects/union-organizing/spotlight-contemporary-union-movement.
[14] See, for example: Lydia Hughes and Jamie Woodcock, Troublemaking: Why You Should Organize Your Workplace (New York: Verso, 2023); Jane McAlevey, No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
[15] See Mark Anner and Matthew Fischer-Daly, “Worker Voice: What It Is, What It Is Not, and Why It Matters,” Center for Global Workers’ Rights at The Pennsylvania State University, 2023, https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ILAB/Worker-Voice-Report-Final-3-6-24.pdf.
[16] Marie-Josée Legault and Johanna Weststar, Not All Fun and Games: Videogame Labour, Project-Based Workplaces, and the New Citizenship at Work (Montreal: Concordia University Press, 2024); Sean O’Brady and Virginia Doellgast, “Collective Voice and Worker Well-Being: Union Influence on Performance Monitoring and Emotional Exhaustion in Call Centers,” Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 60, no. 3 (2021): 307–37, https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12286.
[17] “Unions Help Reduce Disparities and Strengthen Our Democracy,” Economic Policy Institute, April 23, 2021, https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-help-reduce-disparities-and-strengthen-our-democracy/.
[18] Amanda Tobin Ripley, “‘Not Just for Coal Miners’: Unionization in U.S. Art Museums,” Curator: The Museum Journal 66, no. 4 (2023): 609–27, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cura.12574.
[19] See, for example: Robin Pogrebin, “The New Museum Is World Class, but Many Find It a Tough Place to Work,” The New York Times, October 5, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/arts/the-new-museum-is-world-class-but-many-find-it-a-tough-place-to-work.html.
[20] Sarah Jaffe, Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (London: Hachette UK, 2021); Jae Yun Kim Troy H. Campbell, Steven Shepherd, and Aaron C. Kay, “Understanding Contemporary Forms of Exploitation: Attributions of Passion Serve to Legitimize the Poor Treatment of Workers,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 118, no. 1 (2020): 121–48, https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000190; Katja Praznik, “Invisible Art Work or Until When Will We Reproduce the Exploitation of Labor in the Arts?” in The Routledge Companion to Marxisms in Art History, ed. Tijen Tunali and Brian Winkenweder (New York: Routledge, 2025), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003127376-31; Vince Quiles, “Employers Can’t Use Your ‘Passions’ as an Excuse Not to Pay You,” The Real News Network, July 19, 2023, http://therealnews.com/employers-cant-use-your-passions-as-an-excuse-not-to-pay-you; Amanda Tobin Ripley, “The Passion Subsidy,” The Power-Shifting Potential of Collectivism in US Art Museums (Museums Moving Forward Publications, 2024), https://museumsmovingforward.com/publications/mmf-publications-the-power-shifting-potential-of-collectivism-in-us-art-museums/chapters/the-passion-subsidy.
[21] Jillian Steinhauer, “Art World Inequities Spark Labour Campaign by Museum Workers,” The Art Newspaper, March 8, 2019, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2019/03/08/art-world-inequities-spark-labour-campaign-by-museum-workers.
[22] Jeremy Brecher, Strike!, rev., exp., and upd. ed. (Oakland: PM Press, 2014); Kim Kelly, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor (New York: Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2023).
[23] Calculated from publicly accessible information on the National Labor Relations Board website using the search term “museum.” “Case Search,” National Labor Relations Board, accessed June 15, 2026, https://www.nlrb.gov/search/case/museum?f[0]=case_type:C.
[24] Emmet Teran, “Key Anti-Union Law Firms,” Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, February 1, 2022, https://workerorganizing.org/law-firms-union-busters-16642/.
[25] Margaret Poydock, Teke Wiggin, and Celine McNicholas, U.S. Employers Spend More than $1.5 Billion Annually on Union Avoidance, Economic Policy Institute, May 20, 2026, https://www.epi.org/publication/u-s-employers-spend-more-than-1-5-billion-annually-on-union-avoidance/.
[26] Ripley, “‘Another World Is Possible’” 2025; Inga Skippings and Kemi Ilesanmi, Understanding the Rise of Unionization in Visual Arts Museums, Beyond Neutrality, December 2025, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/651eeddc8d7ed372484d2e59/t/69fc7a6d50663875e592207a/1778154093707/BNACP+%7C+Visual+Arts+Findings+%7C+December+2025+%7C+FINAL.pdf.
[27] Amanda Tobin Ripley, “Bargaining at the Art Museum: Building Equity into New Union Contracts,” The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society (February 2, 2026): 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1080/10632921.2026.2621378.
[28] As of June 15, 2026. For up-to-date data, see: https://museumsmovingforward.com/research/projects/union-organizing/spotlight-time-until-first-contract-ratification.
[29] The exception to this is Weingarten rights, which apply to workers as soon as their union is certified (after voluntary recognition by the employer or majority vote). Weingarten rights refer to employees’ rights to union representation at any meetings with management that could be disciplinary in nature. “Weingarten Rights: The Right to Request Representation During an Investigatory Interview,” National Labor Relations Board, accessed June 16, 2026, https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/your-rights/weingarten-rights.
[30] MFA Union (@mfaunion), “A Union is a Long Term Investment,” Instagram, October 6, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/CGDwjpalqPD/?img_index=10.
[31] Amanda Tobin Ripley, Adam Rizzo, Emma Rose Rainville, Jessi Jones, and Josh Davis, Museum Unions Enact Workplace Justice, (Museums Moving Forward, 2025), https://museumsmovingforward.com/study-groups#museum-union-contracts-equity.
[32] As evidenced in the collective bargaining agreements at the Tacoma Museum of Art (https://wfse.org/system/files/2025-07/7.28.2025_draft_contract_for_ratification.pdf) and the University of Michigan Museum of Art (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ndyah4Aev8yVq6CWiZTjYSD6roiTcqg3/view), respectively.
[33] See https://www.bargainingforthecommongood.org/. In the “Museum Unions Enact Workplace Justice” zine, we specifically highlight the most recent contract from the Chicago Teachers’ Union, which includes provisions on climate justice, gender equity, affordable housing, and academic freedom, for example. Selections from their recent contract are available at: https://www.ctulocal1.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Highlights-Proposed-TA-2025-03-31.pdf.
[34] AFSCME DC 47, AFSCME 2186, and Philly CWU (@afscmedc47, @afscme2186, @phillycwu), “ICE Out! Philly <3’s Immigrants Rally,” Instagram, April 11, 2026, https://www.instagram.com/p/DW_V2VAgKTI/?img_index=1; SAM VSO Union and National Nordic Museum Workers United (@samvsounion, @nnmworkers), “The Art of Solidarity: Nonprofit Community Mixer,” Instagram, February 22, 2026, https://www.instagram.com/p/DVEtM98kqwM/. See also Met Workers 4 Palestine (https://www.instagram.com/metworkers4palestine/) and Noguchi Museum Rights (https://www.instagram.com/noguchirights/), parallel worker organizing initiatives that developed in tandem with union organizing drives.
[35] Nuala Morse, The Museum as a Space of Social Care, Critical Studies in Heritage, Emotion and Affect (Oxfordshire: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021); Martina Tanga, “Let’s Imagine a New Museum Staff Structure,” Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 19, no. 1 (2021): 1–16, https://jcms-journal.com/articles/10.5334/jcms.197.
[36] Skippings and Ilesanmi, Understanding the Rise of Unionization.
[37] Philly Cultural Workers United (@phillycwu with @afscmedc47, @afscmelocal1723, and @afscme2186), “Solidarity Day with Starbucks Workers!,” Instagram, December 3, 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DRzpsHdD3Z-/?img_index=1.
[38] MOCA Union (@moca_union), “MOCA Union Mutual Aid in Hardship Fund,” Instagram, March 30, 2020, https://www.instagram.com/p/B-XiHzrFcFb/.
[39] SAM VSO Union (@samvsounion), “Let’s study! Museums and Wealth: A Museum Worker Perspective,” Instagram, June 22, 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DLLt7FgPMpA/.
[40] Brooklyn Museum Union (@bkmuseumunion), “Brooklyn Museum Union Happy Hour,” Instagram, July 13, 2023, https://www.instagram.com/p/Cuo2Eh-L8fe/.
[41] Douglas Young, “Working Alone: Atomized and Desocialized Production as an Obstacle to Power,” Spectre Journal (April 21, 2022), https://doi.org/10.63478/17L882RT.