For the third time in five years, Cal Academy of Sciences Executive Director Scott Sampson has announced layoffs, this time affecting 37 SEIU 1021 Cal Academy Workers United (CAWU) members. The layoff list includes the entire planetarium team and the content developer team, which collaborated with several indigenous communities in California on the award-winning California: State of Nature exhibit.

Adding insult to injury, many workers got the news of the impending layoffs from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, initially published without comment from the union, before they heard it from the senior leadership team.

They are fighting back. Most union members on the layoff list are still reporting to work, since, as curatorial assistant and chapter secretary/treasurer Marie Angel told KQED, “They did not meet with us to discuss alternatives to layoffs, even though they said that they had exhausted every option.” Management is contractually required to participate in negotiations over the impacts of layoffs.

Last Tuesday, May 5, dozens participated in a solidarity break at noon in the main atrium of the Academy. “On Tuesday, when layoffs announced to some but not all and in very terrible ways, we noticed there were a few boxes that started to collect around desks of people laid off,” said member Holly Rosenblum, who helped lead the action. “We have a a right to keep working, negotiations haven’t even started, so we still have a lot to do before they can even go that far. The fact that all of you showed up and keep working is amazing. So if you’d like to join me in taking some of these boxes to Scott’s desk, feel free to follow.”

They delivered boxes to Sampson’s door. They are also circulating a petition calling for a vote of no confidence in Sampson and rejecting layoffs and using contracting out or AI to replace the work of those being let go.

“Our workers are the Academy, but the executives do not recognize that,” said chapter president Teddy Vollman, who is on the layoff list. ”They have fought us every step of the way, from initial organizing, through our certification election, over a year of contract bargaining, and a lengthy reclassification process. Now, for the third time during our executive director’s five-year tenure, they want to make dozens of people lose their livelihoods. By showing up for each other at this solidarity break, our membership has said, ‘Enough is enough.’ If anyone should pay for our executives’ poor planning, it is the executives, not the workers who actually perform the Academy’s mission.”

ED Scott Sampson raked in $885 million last year, including a bonus of $125 million—more than a full year’s salary for many of the workers on the layoff list. Yet top administrators will not be taking a pay cut, even as they lay off frontline staff and claim to have “exhausted all options.”

“The shows we’ve made have received literally dozens of awards and play in planetariums around the world—the Academy is known the world over for the quality of our planetarium shows,” said Matt Blackwell, who has been on the planetarium production team for 17 years. ”But apparently none of that matters. We’re too expensive—and with these layoffs, this team will cease to exist, and with it will go the Academy’s ability to create this kind of content. 

“This theme is playing out across the Academy—the gutting of teams needed to create, advise and maintain exhibits that will draw people to the Academy. These teams take time, money and effort to create. They cannot and must not be replaced with rented content and so-called AI tools, and their loss will be felt keenly. Management says this is necessary to ensure the future stability of this institution- but the truth is that in sacrificing us, they risk the reputation and the future viability of the Academy. I think it’s way past time that our leaders make their own sacrifices and pay a price for their incompetence and mismanagement, rather expecting us to do it for them.”