Cleveland Museum of Natural History Workers Vote to Unionize in Re-Run Election

Cleveland Museum of Natural History voted to form a union following years of complaints of a hostile work environment overshadowed by the museum’s glittery $150 million makeover. Credit: DLR Group

Employees at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History chose to unionize in a voted tallied this week, following months of what union leaderes called stalling by the museum over the apparent eligibility of supervisors to participate.

Sixty-five workers voted in the second election, with 31 votes in favor and 22 against, sources told Scene. The results were validated Wednesday. They will be the latest major museum base in Ohio to join the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees since Columbus Museum of Art workers unionized in 2022.

“It’s well needed,” one employee who voted today told Scene. “I think that the vote today gives everyone who’s stuck it out over the years a voice. Now we don’t have the fear, if we disagree with leadership, we’re going to lose our jobs.”

The origins of CMNH workers’ union drive lies in a massive, $150-million makeover championed by CEO Sonia Winner, a leader they painted as carrying a my-way-or-the-highway persona that has disgruntled employees who’ve worked for the institution for years.

Three employees framed the pricey renovation, which debuted to museumgoers last December, as a symbol of the CMNH management’s navel-gazing.

Since April, CMNH won Ohio Museums Association’s Institution of the Year award, won the esteemed Prix Versailles architecture prize, and was declared the “Best Museum to Visit with Your Family” by the Northeast Ohio Parent Choice Awards.

Behind those accolades, at least 87 employees have left the museum since 2021, including four CFOs and three HR directors—attributed to, several employees told Scene, mismanagement and a toxic workplace culture. CMNH currently has four curators; a decade ago there were 15.

“Great employees are being pushed out,” one employee told Scene in June. “They don’t want to be a science institution anymore, but a kind of community center.”

“If you piss them off enough, they’ll just fire you,” they added. “That’s why we want a union.”

CMNH workers successfully organizing marks off another plot point in a summer of unionizing across Northeast Ohio.

Employees at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center, Rising Star Coffee, University Hospitals, Signal Ohio all made strides towards unions in the past few months.

For CMNH workers, grievances revolve around Winner’s decision to tilt the museum to being more a public attraction on Wade Oval rather than a pillar of academic research on the natural sciences. This year, CMNH was no longer included in the BioScience Alliance, a consortium of go-to research institutions spearheaded by Case Western, one source told Scene.

“The leadership team, lacking an understanding or appreciation of science, has shifted the institution’s focus away from its core, community-based mission toward a corporate, profit-driven model,” a former employee wrote Scene in June.

“This shift has compromised the institution’s integrity,” they said, “leading to the loss of talent, declining morale, and a reduced ability to serve the community.”

In a statement to Scene, CMNH acknowledged both the re-run election and seemed welcoming for contract talks to come.

“A portion of our Cleveland Museum of Natural History colleagues have voted in favor of unionization,” a spokesperson for CMNH wrote Scene in an email on Wednesday. “We respect our employees’ right to engage in these discussions and respect the process and its outcome.”

“We will bargain collaboratively and in good faith with the union to develop a contract that supports the long-term success of both our employees and our organization,” they added. “We remain focused as always on continuing to inspire our visitors and our community to connect with science and nature.”

And, assuming bargaining talks go well this fall, inspiring more fulfilled workers.

“We want to get paid better—we’re incredibly understaffed. There’s not a department in the museum that’s staffed well,” one employee told Scene. “And we’re all incredible overworked.”

“We all have ideas of how we can make the museum better,” they added. “But if they don’t go with the leadership’s view of the museum, we’ll get let go. And we don’t want that. We don’t want to work in fear.”