Sierra Schiano On the Structural Pressures Behind LACMA’s Union Vote

Over the holiday break, the staff at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) voted overwhelmingly in favor of starting a union. Their move is part of a larger trend of unionization efforts at museums and other art institutions across the country. It makes sense in a nation where job stability is on the wane and inflation is on the rise—with little support from Washington, D.C. and in an art world that isn’t flush with cash. We caught up with Sierra Schiano, who works in the education department at LACMA, before the vote to hear more about the museum’s unionization efforts.

Let’s begin with the internal tipping point that led to the coordinated union effort. What are some of the most significant structural issues inside LACMA, from your standpoint, that motivated this push toward collective representation?

I can’t say there was one single moment or decision that pushed staff members toward collective representation. Rather, there were various longstanding management issues that my colleagues and I were frustrated with. One recurring issue was burnout—workers left, but their vacancies were not filled, leaving the rest of their team to take on more work. Another problem was precarity—LACMA relies on part-time labor for nearly all of its Educational and Public Programming, which means part-time workers can’t rely on consistent work throughout the year. We’re told there are no hours available during the summer and winter holidays—why? Who decides to allocate resources this way? Opportunities for museum education and public programs don’t suddenly stop when schools go on break.

LACMA’s mission statement says that our goal is to serve the public through meaningful educational and cultural experiences for the widest array of audiences. There is so much more LACMA could be doing—more programs, more events—to live up to our mission statement while also providing year-round, sustainable work to its staff. The lack of transparency about executive decisions regarding program priorities and resources and the top-down way those decisions are made, is another significant issue.

I think all workplaces should be unionized because it’s important that workers have a voice. Even if these structural issues did not exist, I still want collective representation to ensure that such issues don’t arise in the future. It’s kind of like how establishing good communication and healthy boundaries is important for any relationship—we’re doing the same thing, but for our workplace.

Efforts to start a union are necessarily a secretive and delicate process. How did yours begin, and how did you first begin to recruit your colleagues?

I first learned about the unionizing efforts in early 2025, and I joined the Organizing Committee (OC) quickly after. As a Mobile Educator, I work almost entirely off-site, which was beneficial in this instance, because it meant I didn’t have to be secretive in my conversations with colleagues about the workplace and what changes we’d like to see at LACMA.

It was a very exciting time because all of my fellow Mobile Educators were immediately on board with the idea of a union; we’re almost all part-timers who’ve been dealing with the precarity that comes with being an arts educator. Recruiting other part-time Education staff—like Teaching Artists—was much harder because those individuals are much more isolated. They work even fewer hours than we do, and they work solo, rather than with a team.

But altogether, I’m glad that I became involved in our unionizing process because I’ve met more colleagues in the past six months as a member of the OC than I’d met over my previous three years as an employee at LACMA. It was so invigorating to know I wasn’t the only one feeling frustrated and that other people were willing to work together to do something about it.

Obviously, there’s been no shortage of coverage around the glamorous opening of the David Geffen Galleries. How has this opening been for the staff?

My team isn’t particularly involved with the DGG beyond tabling at the occasional NexGenLA event, but I’ve heard a lot from my colleagues in other departments. Mainly, it seems like the work related to the DGG is just exacerbating general, longstanding issues about lack of staffing, top-down decision making and limited resources.

Broadly speaking, what are some of the demands of the union?

Right now, we’re working together to determine our priorities for negotiations as a collective, but generally, we’d like higher wages that keep up with the cost of living in L.A., more balanced workloads, expanded benefits and increased transparency about institutional protocols and resources.

You work in the Education & Public Programs department. How would a union make your department, in particular, run more smoothly?

One of my biggest frustrations with LACMA is how much it relies on part-time labor to facilitate its educational programs. Only managers and coordinators have full-time positions with benefits; all of the Mobile Educators, Teaching Artists and Education Assistants are part-time, and we get very inconsistent and limited hours.

I once applied to be a Teaching Artist, but I was told that LACMA couldn’t promise that I’d be able to work even 10 hours a week. As a Mobile Educator, I may get 15-20 hours during the school year, but zero hours in the summer. Our program’s budget basically only covers September to May, so my coworkers and I have to find summer jobs every year. We also don’t get paid when schools go on break during the winter, so you can imagine how stressful it is to deal with rent, health insurance and taxes when your income varies wildly from month to month and you’re juggling three or more jobs annually.

With such precarity comes high turnover rates. We basically lose two Educators every time schools go on break, and we are already a small team to start with. The Mobile Program currently employs only seven part-time Educators, so we feel the loss heavily anytime someone leaves, and we have to scramble to train someone new as quickly as possible. The ultimate result is that with fewer staff members, we’re not able to visit as many schools and provide this very unique educational experience to as many students as we could with sufficient support.

I feel like there’s so much more we could be doing to bring arts education to communities throughout L.A. if we had the budget and stability to expand and experiment. I’m hopeful that with our union, we’ll be better positioned to negotiate more full-time positions in Education and more support for our programs in general.

Management has declined to voluntarily recognize the union. What does that signal to you, and how does that affect the process moving forward?

Not receiving voluntary recognition signaled that, although Management might say that they want to support their workers fully, they’re only willing to do so on their terms. By insisting on an election, Management signaled that they were going to push back against the union in whatever ways are legally and socially acceptable. Management repeatedly stated in all-staff emails and meetings that an election would be the most “democratic” option where all employees would get the opportunity to “do the research” and “make an informed decision.” But we’d already done the research, and we’ve already made informed decisions by signing the union authorization cards.

If LACMA truly respected the voices of staff, it would have granted voluntary recognition. Instead, LACMA chose to spend money on a private election to pose the same question—“Do you want to unionize?”—and it generated the same result! The answer was always going to be yes! There was no functional difference between the democratic and legal process of voluntary recognition through verifying signed union cards and the private election. Personally, I think the private election was a waste of time and money—resources that Management should be investing in its staff and programs. They should have listened to us in the first place instead of delaying the inevitable.

Despite this, my colleagues and I are thrilled that we won our union election with 96 percent voting in favor of the union! Now we can start the new year fresh and focused on winning our first contract.

Your unionization efforts mirror similar efforts at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Jewish Museum, the Whitney, the Brooklyn Museum and other institutions. Why do you think this has been a trend in recent years?

I can’t speak to the motivations of other museum workers, but I’ve come to realize that in the face of a federal administration that devalues and outright attacks institutions dedicated to the arts and humanities (I’m thinking specifically of Trump’s plans to eliminate the National Endowment of the Humanities, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services), the best way to protect myself, my colleagues and the work that we do is to organize. I can’t rely on the beneficence of the government or the wealthy or even my own Management, because those entities have demonstrated that they are only interested in protecting their own bottom line. But I trust my colleagues, and I believe in collective action. I am confident that we can build a better world together, one unionized workplace at a time.

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