Employees at the Louisville Speed Art Museum filed to unionize under the guidance of the United Auto Workers on April 29. This is part of a nationwide movement of cultural institutions to develop employee unions.
The Legal Intelligencer reported over 60,000 cultural institution employees unionized in 2022, and thousands more have followed—including Louisville’s own Speed Art Museum. The national push has been the result of cultural institutions’ employees’ dissatisfaction with pay, opportunity for career advancement, inequality at their employer, and more.
While the decision to unionize may be a response to conflict, Codi Goodwyn, a Speed employee who has been involved with the union’s creation, said unionizing is to develop a “more formal structure” for museum employees.
“There was this growing sense amongst the staff that we needed a more formal structure that could help all of us support one another and ensure that everyone’s voice was going to be heard in shaping the future of our workplace,” Goodwyn said.
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Goodwyn has been a control room operator at the Speed since 2021. Over the past two years, Goodwyn has worked with employees from each department to create the union.
“We are part of a growing movement that’s national, but for, like, our little corner of the world, we are just a group of staff,” Goodwyn said. “We are every department we represented from every single department that has come together.”
Each week, the Speed employees have set aside time outside of work and other obligations to develop this union.
“Even though it takes so much extra time to do this, it’s been incredibly energizing, like in the truest sense, because we’ve all come together, we’ve shared our ideas, we’ve solved problems, and we’ve really strengthened our relationships with each other,” Goodwyn said. “It’s been wonderful. It has been an absolute honor to work with my colleagues on this.”
Goodwyn said there hasn’t been much communication with upper-level members of the museum,
but has felt support from the Speed director, who shared sentiments about supporting the
museum’s mission and employees but not the union directly. Goodwyn hopes for an opportunity
to speak with the board of trustees.
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“At the Speed Art Museum, we are grateful for the dedication and creativity our employees bring to our mission every day,” Kim Butterweck, the Speed Art Museum’s director of communications and marketing, wrote in an email. “We have been notified that the United Auto Workers (UAW) union has filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to represent some employees. We respect our employees’ legal right to vote in a fairly conducted election to determine whether to collectively organize.”
Now that employees have filed for an election, the next step is for an election date to be set. The
date for the election is not set. However, the employees who have worked to create the union
have demanded voluntary recognition, meaning that if the company recognizes the union, an
election will not have to take place and bargaining can begin immediately.
“We really, really care about the future of our cultural institutions,” Goodwyn said. “We care about the museum’s mission. We want to be able to support our colleagues better, and we want to be able to support our communities better. It’s kind of our way of building a long-term sustainability by making sure that everyone’s voice is heard.”
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This article appears in May 9-22, 2025.