Strike Actions

In this spotlight, we dig into strike actions by private nonprofit art museum unions. We defined strike actions as either a strike, where a temporary work stoppage is held by workers to support their demands on an employer, or a threatened strike, where membership votes to strike or publicly announces plans for a strike. Strikes, while not limited to the realm of organized labor, are often associated with unionized workplaces and constitute a powerful tool available to workers: withholding their labor often builds considerable leverage during contract negotiations. Strikes are a last resort and are only voted for by union membership after all other avenues for advancing contract negotiations have been exhausted.

Of the campaigns we’ve followed, (X% have been able to ratify a contract without a strike action. As of 2026, the vast majority of strike actions have taken place during a first contract campaign and resulted in a tentative agreement on contract terms from management. Also as of 2026, all contemporary wave strikes (since 2019) have been successful, meaning that workers achieved some or all of their goals. Of actions that have resulted in a temporary work stoppage, the strikes range from one day to eight weeks²⁹ in length, mirroring national trends.³⁰

We began this research in 2023, a year of many high-profile strikes with broad public approval:³¹ 50,000+ UAW members at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (notably, President Biden became the first sitting president to walk a picket line when he joined these auto workers in September 2023); 170,000+ SAG-AFTRA and Writer’s Guild actors and screenwriters; and thousands of other major labor actions by UPS drivers to nurses to Starbucks workers. A 2023 report from the Labor Action Tracker out of Cornell University and the University of Illinois documented a 9% increase in work stoppages from 2022 to 2023, also noting that the number of workers involved in these stoppages grew by 141% over the same year.³²