After three years of organizing and nearly two years since they voted by a landslide to form their union, Cal Academy Workers United, as a chapter of SEIU 1021, staff at the California Academy of Sciences have ratified their first union contract with an overwhelming 87% yes vote. The new three-year contract makes crucial improvements to wages, benefits, and working conditions.

The new contract raises the minimum wage at the Academy from $20.25 an hour to $25 an hour by July 2026, which affects the lowest paid third of workers — an important step in reducing inequality that was a priority for the members of the union negotiations team. It also provides for a regular schedule of raises ranging from 8-35% over three years, a first for employees at the Academy, and adds an extra five days of vacation time for those with less than two years of service — 35% of workers.

“It’s been more than 3 years since we first started organizing. It feels great to have established our first contract and built a really solid foundation to move forward on having a say in our wages and working conditions,” said Ian Hart, an exhibits preparator who has worked at the Academy since 2011 and was part of the union organizing effort from its inception. ”We have built a lot of personal connections between departments that we didn’t have before. The contract itself creates a stable structure for Academy management to relate to us. I believe it will create a more functional management.” 

“I keep thinking about how strongly the Academy leadership pushed back and put a really anti-union campaign against this organizing,” Olivia VanDamme, a community science coordinator who has worked at the Academy for five and a half years, reflected at the victory party. “I keep remembering seeing the posters they put up, really misleading people and miseducating people. It’s incredible to think about that moment of major, major pushback from powerful people at this institution and the unification it took, and the education — we helped each other, and the bargaining team helped educate all of us about what it means to be a union.”

One notable highlight of the new contract is a side letter protecting the right of Academy workers to strike to defend democracy and public services. In light of the Academy’s mission to “regenerate the natural world,” both sides recognize the importance of collective action by unionized workers to resist efforts by the current regime to undermine scientific research and efforts to address climate change. With authoritarianism on the rise in the U.S. and amid calls for a national general strike for May 2028, the contract is strategically set to expire April 30, 2028, to allow employees full participation in the strike against fascism. But an additional side letter allows participation in large-scale civic protests during the life of the contract, where the parties will negotiate reduced staffing so workers can join nonviolent resistance.

Also important to the union bargaining team were provisions added to make the Academy more inclusive and accessible to all, especially in the face of the current attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion. These provisions include management collaboration with the union to establish a paid entry-level career pipeline, aiming to create a diverse and representative workforce (currently, many careers at the Academy require unpaid experience for entry-level jobs). It also codifies new gender-inclusive policies and institutes periodic educational events on topics related to colonial history in the scientific field, with compensation for staff generating the content.

“For our contract to shape the way that communities will interact with science going forward and to make it accessible for all and for people who are not straight white men is probably the best message of all,” said bargaining team member Holly Rosenblum, who is a senior biologist at the Academy and has worked there since 2008. ”We’ve taken that power and put it into the staff and the community to shape how that looks going forward.”

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SEIU Local 1021 represents nearly 60,000 employees in local governments, nonprofit agencies, health care programs, courts, and schools throughout Northern California, including seven private colleges and numerous community colleges. SEIU Local 1021 is a diverse, member-driven organization with members who work to make our cities, schools, colleges, counties, and special districts safe and healthy places to live and raise our families.