The Field Museum’s unionized employees on Wednesday rallied outside the storied natural history museum to speak out against management’s anti-union retaliation and to demand a fair contract with livable wages.
Workers, represented by labor union Field Museum Workers United/AFSCME, said Field Museum management “illegally retaliated” against two former employees by not renewing their contracts in December.
According to a charge filed with the National Labor Relations Board, management broke labor laws and “interfered with protected activity” of Lileas Maier and Alfie Pritzl, former Field Museum employees who were also members of the union’s bargaining team. The charge was filed Friday by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.
“Until recently, I was a proud Field Museum employee,” Maier said at Wednesday’s rally, where a few dozen supporters gathered in sub-freezing temperatures. Maier claimed she was let go not due to performance or lack of resources at the museum but because “we are loud and proud union activists.” She worked at the museum for 3 1/2 years and was a coordinator in the Field Museum Learning Center.
“Anti-union retaliation is illegal. If management wanted to silence us, they failed. We’re still here,” Maiersaid.
The Field Museum spokesperson Bridgette Russell said in an emailed statement, “We deny these allegations and will cooperate with the NLRB as they investigate the issue.”
Field Museum workers are part of a wave of employees unionizing at the city’s venerable cultural institutions, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Newberry Library.
Field Museum Workers United also demanded a fair union contract during its rally.
In March 2023, Field Museum workers voted to unionize with AFSCME’s Council 31. Nearly 300 employees at the museum are union members. Leaders of the organizing drive said the vote came despite an aggressive anti-union campaign from museum management.
Bargaining started in October 2023, “but management continues to drag its feet on fair pay,” AFSCME said in a news release.
Michelle O’Connor, a Field Museum employee for 18 years and member of the bargaining team, said the museum’s cost of living wage increase last year just covered her rent hike. Meanwhile, prices for groceries and other expenses keep climbing, said O’Connor, an operations manager at the museum.
Bargaining with the museum’s management was slated to continue on Wednesday night.
Russell said the museum has “reached multiple tentative agreements, including one at our last session this month. However, bargaining takes time. All parties benefit when a contract is reached quickly, and that has been among the Museum’s goals from the start.”
“We expect real movement on pay increases. We expect and demand respect and dignity,” Christian Hainds, AFSCME Council 31 staff representative, said at the rally. “We will keep the pressure on until we get the contract we need and deserve.”
But at the end of the rally, union members returning to work found the museum’s front entrance locked, AFSCME Council 31 spokesperson Anders Lindell said. . Museum employees returned to work through a side door, he said.
“If this was management’s doing, it’s a laughably absurd overreaction to employees exercising their right to free speech and assembly, outside, during their lunch hour,” Lindell said in an emailed statement. “Management should drop its retaliatory behavior and settle a fair contract with fair pay now.”
Russell, with the Field Museum, said: “We also want to take this opportunity to correct some misinformation circulating regarding a union protest at the Field Museum this afternoon. The Field Museum’s Department of Protection Services was monitoring our South entrance on camera when they observed a large, immediately unidentifiable group trying to enter the Museum en masse. The officers then contacted the Chicago Police Department as a precaution, who conducted a patrol only and did not engage.”
As of last year, AFSCME Council 31, which represents workers in Illinois, had added more than 2,200 members from the state’s cultural institutions since 2021.
Nationwide, AFSCME represents 35,000 cultural workers — more than any other union — and includes 10,000 museum workers at 100 private and public cultural institutions and more than 25,000 library workers at 275 public and private libraries.