Please Touch Museum workers want to unionize

Workers at Philadelphia’s Please Touch Museum have gone public with their plans to form a union, following in the footsteps of workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A vast majority of the 46 proposed members filed paperwork with the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday, expressing their desire to unionize, though organizers declined to give a specific number of participants. The union would include full-time and part-time employees of the museum who are not contractors or managers.

Anand Ghorpadey, a museum learning educator at Please Touch, said the effort began about seven months ago and has gained vocal support from at least one person in every museum department.

“Seeing what the PMA was able to do, what it showed us most of all is no matter how old an institution is, there’s always room for improvement in all facets,” Ghorpadey, 23, said. “That gave us the hope and drive to start this process for ourselves.”

The workers must hold an election on whether to form a union before they can bargain on a contract with the museum. They’re seeking to join the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 47, which represents workers of nonprofits, colleges and universities, and government.

Management for the Please Touch Museum acknowledged the workers’ petition in a statement. “We support all employees’ rights to advocate for themselves and their families and are committed to working towards a positive and productive outcome,” they said.

“If that’s the case, we hope that voluntary recognition is certainly on the table,” Ghorpadey said, in response to the museum’s statement.

Please Touch workers seeking to unionize are aiming to improve pay, benefits, and paid time-off benefits, as well as onboarding, scheduling, training, and promotion processes. Their mission also demands a safe and inclusive workplace with accountability for instances of discrimination and harassment.

“We are lucky to have a ton of amazing, talented people at the museum,” said Lucian Stern, 26, who works in visitor experience. “We’ve also lost a lot of amazing, talented people because they’re looking for something more sustainable long term.”

Ghorpadey and Stern said workers want the museum to invest in more robust security infrastructure. Safety concerns, largely due to disgruntled museum visitors who made verbal or physical threats, have led some people to quit, they said.

The Art Museum workers unionized in 2020. It took them more than two years to ratify a contract, which came at the end of a 19-day strike in October, just as the museum was preparing to open a high-profile exhibit dedicated to the work of Henri Matisse.

The Please Touch Museum is a nonprofit with a mission to “change a child’s life as they discover the power of learning through play.”

The organization has made headlines in recent years. After a move to Fairmount Park in 2008, Please Touch went into bankruptcy in 2015, owing $60 million. It emerged several months later, out of debt and with a new president and CEO, Patricia Wellenbach.

Wellenbach is largely credited with steering the organization out of financial trouble, but, according to a 2021 report from Billy Penn, has also been accused of creating “a stifling management culture” which resulted in staff turnover.

For October 2020 to September 2021 ― the most recent year recorded in the museum’s public financial records ― the museum’s total revenue was $4.8 million. That includes nearly $1.8 million from museum admission, memberships, and special events, and $1.6 million from grants and donations.

Salaries were the organization’s biggest expense, at $2.4 million, which included $577,000 for management salaries. Based on those numbers, the average nonmanagement employee makes roughly $40,000 annually. Public tax records for the 2020-21 fiscal year show that Wellenbach made about $245,000.

“Our goal in this whole process is centered around our love for the institution,” Ghorpadey said. “If this was just a case of disgruntled employees or people that just want more money for the sake of it, we would have different jobs. But we want to stay here.”