Add Your Name to the Open Letter to CEO Scott Stulen and the Seattle Art Museum Board of Trustees 

Dear Scott and the Board of Trustees,

We are excited to announce our union: Seattle Art Museum Workers United.

As SAM Workers United, we are uniting across departments at the museum and affiliating with the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28. We are proudly unionizing alongside tens of thousands of cultural workers across the country, and our VSO peers at SAM, who have organized in recognition of the systemic issues within arts and culture institutions. 

We have a supermajority of support for our union amongst eligible workers. While we have filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board today, we ask you that you proactively respect our collective action towards change by granting us voluntary recognition. We will await your response until X date.

Our solidarity is a movement to improve working conditions in alignment with SAM’s mission, vision, and core values. The challenges we face, such as unsustainable wages, subpar health benefits, and siloed, top-down decision-making, are undeniable, systemic, and have persisted across administrations. Change at the top alone will not solve our root problems.

Our intention is to strengthen the relationship between leadership and employees to accomplish the following: 

• Ensure workers earn sustainable and respectful wages
• Establish “just-cause” protections rather than “at-will” employment
• Improve healthcare, PTO, retirement benefits, and retention incentives
• Establish transparent, collaborative decision-making across the museum
• Create a workplace culture of inclusion, trust, and accountability 
   

We urge you to demonstrate your commitment to equity by respecting our legal right to organize our union without facing intimidation or coercion. We ask that you do not waste resources on distributing anti-union propaganda, continuing to retain anti-union lawyers, or holding mandatory anti-union meetings. 

We are ready to meet with you and the Board to discuss voluntary recognition and work together towards a better SAM for all.

Sincerely,

[names, departments, and signatures]