Employees at the Louisville Speed Art Museum won their election to have their union recognized under United Auto Workers on Wednesday, June 18. The results were certified by the National Labor Relations Board on July 1.
The majority of Speed employees voted in favor of the union, according to the Speed Workers Union Instagram post.
Aris Spagnuolo is one of the Speed employee union’s organizers and the accounts payable specialist at the Speed Art Museum.
We’ve been working on it for over two years, which was very nerve wracking and paranoia inducing at times,” Spagnuolo said. “It feels amazing to be able to talk about it openly now, and just knowing that our hard work paid off and was successful just feels good to you know, have it out there.”
Employees at the museum filed to unionize under the guidance of the United Auto Workers on April 29, as part of a nationwide movement of cultural institutions to develop employee unions.
United Auto Workers Local 2110 is a parent union for the Louisville Speed Art Museum and serves as a parent union for many other museums, automotive and aerospace workers unions nationwide, according to a report for Museums Moving Forward.
Since 2019, more unions are being created to protect employees in both public and private museums due to systematic workplace inequalities, layoffs and furloughs. The report estimates that over 15,000 museum employees are represented by unions in the United States.
“Reflecting on the process, in that sense, I feel like I just admire my colleagues’ bravery, especially those of them who have experienced bad unionization efforts in the past, or ones that didn’t work out,” Spagnuolo said. “It’s been really amazing to see everybody’s trust, especially I feel and solidarity with each other, just kind of knowing that we want the best for each other and acting collectively to achieve that.”
This included all departments except Protection Services. The Protection Services department filed for election with the guidance of the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America on May 30. The Protection Services department will have a separate election in the “near future,” according to the post.
“Despite the museum forcing us to separate and to do two different unions, we’re still very much in communication with each other, and we’re still very united and aligned in our goals and actions and everything,” They said.
The NLRB certified the results of the election on July 1. This makes the Louisville Speed Art Museum the first independent museum in the state to unionize.
“The Museum remains committed to respecting eligible employees’ right to participate in this process,” Kim Butterweck, the Speed Art Museum’s director of communications and marketing, wrote in an email.
The next step union is to decide what union member hope to see out of the first bargaining agreement, then put together a bargaining committee to negotiate with the Board of Trustees
“Now we’re going to survey our bargaining unit members to see what they would like from our first collective bargaining agreement, and then after we’ve gathered those responses, we will put together a bargaining committee and begin negotiations with the Board of Trustees,” They said. “Those are our immediate goals.”
Beyond that, Spagnuolo hopes to inspire other culture institutions or nonprofits in the South to begin organizing. They encourage other organizations interested in the union process or hoping to unionize at their institution to contact the Speed Employees Union for guidance.
“I hope that our success inspires other cultural institutions and nonprofits in Kentucky and in the south in general to organize,” Spagnuolo said. “I would also really like to encourage anybody in an organization such as that to reach out to us if they need guidance, or if they don’t know where to start. I feel very strongly about that, because unions are kind of in our blood here in Kentucky, and it’s an honor to, I think it’s an honor to follow in the footsteps of the union leaders that came before us to establish things.”
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This article appears in Jul 4-31, 2025.