After three years of organizing and two years after forming a union, workers at the California Academy of Sciences ratified their first contract today.
Eighty-seven percent of the union’s roughly 350 members voted to ratify the contract, which consists of wage increases alongside protections to strike and additional inclusivity measures.
Workers’ minimum wage will increase some 20 percent, from $20.25 per hour to $25 an hour by July 2026. The largest raises are going to the lowest-paid staff, which mainly includes some biologists, custodians, and visitor-facing roles like ticket sellers, who will also see an additional 15 percent increase over the next three years.
The contract gives five extra days of vacation time to the 35 percent of museum workers with less than two years on the job, increasing their vacation time from 10 days a year to 15. Additionally, all workers will get an additional two days of sick leave.
The contract also protects workers’ rights to strike, a press release from the Cal Academy Workers United union stated.
Marie Angel, a member of the bargaining team, highlighted additional benefits being instated. “A really big change is that the employer can no longer cut or change our benefits without negotiation with our unit, and the same goes for our retirement benefits,” she said.
She also mentioned enshrining Cal Academy’s remote-work policy, which has been regarded as “one of the best remote-work policies in the state of California,” she said.
That union, affiliated with SEIU 1021, the city’s largest public-sector employee union with around 60,000 members in northern California, first formed in July 2023 after months of organizing culminated in a 210-63 vote in favor of a union. The museum’s management had declined to voluntarily recognize the union, necessitating a vote.
In the summer of 2024, teenagers with a youth climate program at the museum distributed flyers supporting the workers ongoing contract negotiations and were swiftly retaliated against, they said. All 14 teenagers in the program received calls telling them not to return to the museum, they said, and the museum shuttered the program soon after. Its staff coordinator was also let go.
The museum, for its part, said the program was always temporary and that it was not retaliating against the youth. The San Francisco Youth Commission censured the museum for what it called a “disheartening example of pushback” against teenagers “exercising their voices.”
The Cal Academy is in financially dire straits and lost its chief financial officer and managing director last week. Its leadership warned last year that it was facing a multi-million dollar shortfall and, like other cultural institutions nationwide, reduced revenue post-pandemic.
The union’s new contract is set to expire on April 30, 2028. The end date was chosen “strategically” to coincide with the expiration of several other large union contracts across the country, following a call from the United Auto Workers president for a national general strike on May Day in 2028.
It would also create a “paid entry-level career pipeline” so the museum relies on unpaid interns less, and calls for more education on “colonial history in the scientific field.”
“For our contract to shape the way that communities will interact with science going forward and to make it accessible for all and for people who are not straight white men is probably the best message of all,” said Holly Rosenblum, a bargaining team member and a senior biologist at the Cal Academy, in the press release.
“The contract itself creates a stable structure for Academy management to relate to us. I believe it will create a more functional management,” added Ian Hart, a Cal Academy employee since 2011 and founding member of the union.
Update, May 21, 9:24 a.m.: Management for the Cal Academy sent the following statement: We’re proud to have reached our first union contract with Cal Academy Workers United. This agreement reflects months of thoughtful negotiation and a shared commitment to our people and our mission.
It’s a meaningful step forward — one that strengthens our workplace, supports our staff, and helps ensure the long-term health of the Academy. We’re grateful to everyone who came to the table in good faith to get this done.
If this causes ticket prices to increase, it might reduce the number of visitors. Always a risk.
Their problems go back to the giant redesign. Much like the Exploratorium, they went from a smaller, well respected institution, to this big bet on tourism.
I don’t know what the future holds for the Academy, but I am going to rejoin because they settled with the union. It meant a lot to my son when he was younger and they deserve support *when they do the right thing*.
Also kind of hoping they can find a director who doesn’t commute from Marin. Because. Just. Wow.
Are we still in Kansas?
Money woes? Well they tore down Steinhart and went fancy. Frankly, I find it less inviting.