The labor movement is enjoying a resurgence in the U.S., largely due to the COVID pandemic forcing us to re-evaluate our roles in the workforce and what it means to be a worker during late-stage capitalism.

As economic instability, houselessness, and unemployment—with numbers similar to those of the Great Depression—rose, the net worth of the ten wealthiest individuals in the world (note: all white men) nearly tripled. In response to the staggering (and growing) wealth inequality, workers at Amazon, Starbucks, Apple, and Trader Joes began unionizing despite their companies' relentless, illegal, multi-million-dollar union-busting campaigns.¹

In the art world, the precarity of employment for arts workers was underscored during the pandemic when we discovered that most museums—even the behemoths—don't maintain adequate capital reserves to support payroll for more than a few weeks. (My home museum, Portland Art Museum, had to rely on one wealthy board member to write a check for two weeks of payroll.) Mass furloughs and layoffs swept the arts and cultural sector in the first half of 2020.

Since then, more arts workers have joined the labor movement. In last two years, workers at the Art Institute of Chicago, MASS MoCA, and Baltimore Museum of Art have all unionized. They do this to demand wages that keep pace with the cost of living; to receive basic benefits like health care, retirement, and paid time off; to safeguard the right to collectively bargain; and to ensure mechanisms for transparency and accountability from their employers. It's always an uphill battle, though, and many attempts to unionize fail. Or, as in the case of The Maryland Institute of Art, union efforts are stymied by retaliative layoffs, which are not uncommon.

And I'm sorry to have to tell you that this is the good news.

The bad news is that the legal right to collectively bargain only extends to employees and doesn’t apply to independent contractors. This is particularly meaningful for arts workers because we are three times more likely than workers in other sectors to be self-employed. Approximately 75% of arts workers are freelancers.

The reason that 75% of us can’t collectively bargain is because as freelancers we are seen in the eyes of the law as independent businesses and competitors. So if independent contractors work together to set wages and benefits, it can be considered price fixing, which violates antitrust law.

However discouraging, hope is not lost. There are things we can all do to support arts workers—whether employed or self-employed—to achieve more favorable and stable working conditions:

At The National Level

On March 19, 2021, H.R. 842 (Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021) passed in the House. Since then, it’s been referred to the Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions in the Senate but not yet voted on. If passed by the Senate, this legislation will help some independent contractors by reclassifying them as employees if they meet certain criteria. Contact your senators and tell them that you want them to support the PRO Act.

At The Local Level

Laws can be made at the city level that are very effective—perhaps even more effective than federal laws like the PRO Act—in expanding the rights of all freelancers. Here’s an example of one such law that was passed in NYC in 2017.

Contact your city commissioners and state senators and about establishing or introducing similar protections where you live.

When You’re Offered A Contract

If you’re an arts worker who is in a position to speak up when offered a contract:² ask the organization/institution that wants to hire you if they are W.A.G.E. certified or moving toward W.A.G.E certification. Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E) is “a small artist-run organization” that establishes minimum fee schedules³ for everything from the commissioning of new work to artist talks to writing an exhibition brochure to participating in a solo or group exhibition.

Even if the arts organization that is trying to contract with you doesn’t have formal certification, you can use W.A.G.E.’s fee schedules to help you negotiate. And every time a contractor asks an institution if it’s engaged in fair labor practices, it motivates that institution to do better.

Join An Advocacy Group

There are established groups, like Freelancers Union and Cultural Workers United, that are working hard to fight for freelancers’ rights, whether they’re a part of the arts and culture sector or not. Membership is often free and you can take advantage of health benefits, advocacy, and resources like customizable contracts.

A group called Arts Worker’s Inquiry recently sent out a survey to arts workers who, according to the group’s website, “answered that they want better pay, more permanent full-time positions, industry-wide unionization, wage equity, wage transparency, health insurance, adequate paid sick leave, severance pay, increased worker protections (including on-site protection/PPE), means to effectively confront acts of racism and sexism within the workplace, public arts funding, and centrally located spaces to meet, work, and socialize.”

These things are extraordinarily reasonable for any worker to expect, but we are still fighting for them, spending endless hours of unpaid labor to make things more just and to make the lives of arts workers more livable.

According to a 2021 Gallup poll in the U.S., 77% of people ages 18-34 approve of unions, which suggests that this is the direction that the entire labor force is moving. As such, arts organizations and institutions have two choices, as I see it: start planning—on the institutional level—how better to support workers, or collectively waste billions of dollars trying to stave off a rapidly approaching inevitability.