Time Until First Contract Ratification

1. During the quiet phase (sometimes called the “underground phase”), workers form an organizing committee, connect with eligible colleagues on identifying important issues, and develop a campaign vision and demands based on collective priorities. Typically (although not always), workers will reach out to an established union for support and representation. Given the confidential nature of the quiet phase, we do not have data on the various durations of this stage.
2. A campaign announcement (often called “going public”) includes a public letter to the museum’s management and broader community. For our purposes, we consider the campaign announcement date as the beginning of a union’s certification campaign. The public letter usually includes a request for voluntary recognition from management to avoid an often-protracted and contentious election. During this time, the organizing committee also collects signed union cards from eligible and supportive colleagues.
3. After successfully gaining voluntary recognition from management or winning a union election with a simple majority (50% + 1), the union is officially certified.²² For our purposes, we consider this date as the beginning of the union’s contract campaign. During the contract campaign, union members elect a bargaining team to represent them in negotiations with management. Both sides typically have chief negotiators: a union staff representative for the unionized workers and an internal or (more often) externally contracted law firm to represent management. As we’ll explore in this spotlight, the process of negotiating a first contract can be especially lengthy and takes on average X months.
4. Once both parties tentatively agree to the contract, it is sent to union members to vote for ratification. Only when the contract is ratified by membership does it go into effect. Contract durations are typically anywhere from 1 to 5 years. All subsequent contracts are negotiated in a similar fashion to Stage 3. Subsequent contracts typically take less time, however, as there is usually less new content to negotiate.

How do first-contract negotiation durations in private nonprofit art museums compare to US unions overall?

A 2022 analysis found that the length of time between certifying a union and ratification of a first contract has steadily increased over the past decade. Analyzing data from 2005 to 2022, researchers at Bloomberg Law found the average time taken to ratify a first contract was 465 days. The average time to ratify a first contract for private nonprofit art museums is X days, X longer than the current US average.²³ This number does not include the data from unions currently negotiating a first contract, where the average contract negotiation duration is X days and counting.

A protracted contract negotiation campaign has become so standard in the sector that we are beginning to see it employed by management to discourage new unions.²⁴ And yet, since labor law dictates that the failure by both sides to reach an agreement ultimately returns labor relations back to the pre-union status quo, delaying the ratification of a contract strongly benefits the employer over the union.²⁵ Given that contracts are taking even longer to ratify in private nonprofit art museums than the national average, we hope to investigate this phenomenon further to make visible what is causing protracted contract negotiations. The widely endorsed Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act²⁶ can provide a possible roadmap here. If passed, the Act would encourage more efficient negotiations by: (1) requiring management to begin negotiations within 10 days, (2) allowing a request for mediation if an agreement cannot be reached within 90 days, and (3) ultimately submitting to a neutral party to impose a two-year contract if mediation fails.

From Union Certification to Ratifying a First Contract vs. US overall (in days)

Certification Process

In the private sector, unions are certified after receiving voluntary recognition from the employer or winning a majority vote in an election. Here, we see that the vast majority (X%) of private nonprofit art museum unions have gone through an official election process rather than being voluntarily recognized by their employers. The X% “not applicable” refers to the two campaigns that failed to receive certification before their unions were quashed (by illegal retaliatory layoffs or by closing the entire museum). To see the unions for which we are missing campaign certification information, please filter by “unknown” in the Certification Process category of the Union Index.

Number of Unions by Campaign Stage²⁷