Union calls for boycott of Seattle's Chihuly glass museum
SEATTLE -- When the city agreed to let the Wright family build a museum dedicated to glass-artist Dale Chihuly on prime public real estate at the Seattle Center, it was supposed to get a $1 million children's play area in return.
In the nearly two years since the City Council approved the lease, Chihuly Garden and Glass opened underneath the Space Needle to great fanfare, but little to no progress has been made on the play area.
Now, hospitality union UNITE HERE Local 8, which is currently in a dispute with the Wright family's Space Needle Corporation over labor practices at the Needle, is calling for a boycott of Chihuly Garden and Glass on behalf of local artists and the community.
Artists at Play, the 1.5-acre public play area to be designed by local artists, was supposed to mitigate the loss of the Seattle Center's Fun Forest when Chihuly Garden and Glass was built.
Under the museum's lease, the Space Needle Corporation would put $1 million toward a play area, plus another $1 million toward its maintenance over the next two decades.
When the terms of the lease were announced back in 2010, Seattle City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw said the playground would create a more family-oriented Seattle Center by being a place children beg to be taken and parents and grandparents are happy to go.
But, progress on the play area seems to be nonexistent.
“I don’t feel comfortable taking my small child into the glass exhibit, and I also cannot afford the admission prices,” mother Lulu Roque said in a Local 8 press release. “Unfortunately, they built over potential open space and the Fun Forest, so the exhibit is not benefiting families like mine at all.”
But according to Chihuly Garden and Glass, the museum always planned to wait until after the Seattle Center's 50th anniversary celebration to start work on the play area.
Museum spokesperson April Matson said Chihuly Garden and Glass is working toward selecting an advisory committee for Artists at Play and is also currently trying to finalize a Seattle Center location for the play area.
As part of its boycott, UNITE HERE Local 8 is also calling out Chihuly Garden and Glass for its failure to get to work on a 1,700-square-foot gallery for Northwest artists.
“It is really disappointing to see that the Chihuly exhibit was built with no place for other aritsts’ work to be displayed,” local artist Shea Conley said in a Local 8 press release. “Chihuly Garden and Glass does little to support local artists, but they profit off our public land.”
But while a gallery for local artists was included in the lease at one point, it was removed from the final version, Matson said.
Local 8 also has its own reasons for calling the boycott. According to the union, Space Needle workers were assured banquet jobs at Chihuly Garden and Glass would go to them. Instead, they claim the Space Needle is subcontracting the jobs to the lowest bidder.
I'm not impressed that UniteHere Local 8 is trying to influence the outcome of its labor negotiations by dragging the local arts community into the mud. The playground was put on hold by the Seattle Center administration. The NW artists gallery was removed from the agreement in 2011, and is still being considered for future projects but was not and is not a broken promise.Â
Chihuly Garden & Glass does support local artists. In fact they just hosted an awards banquet for Pratt Fine Arts Center that featured local artists that I attended just a few weeks ago. This is very much about Local 8 getting a new labor contract and nothing to do with broken promises or outrage in the local arts community. Far more local artists are in favor of Chihuly Garden and Glass. Do you think we'd prefer it stayed an outdated amusement park? It is an arts facility and helps to burnish Seattle as a first class arts and culture city. This boycott is a pathetic attempt by this Union to draw attention to itself at the expense of local artists and the local arts community. Artists would normally be sympathetic to a labor dispute of this nature, but Local 8 is alienating people who would otherwise support it.
@komonews We know you <3 Seattle, does @ChihulyGG? You decide! http://t.co/Nps4hkIF6q
I am working at restaurants for 30 years. I am now working in a union house for 15 year.  Before I worked at many restaurants in the Seattle area as a server but all of those places I only could stay no more than a year.  The reason was that I always told the managers or the owners to f*** their selves. The reasons I did that are because they treated me and my co-workers like we were black slaves in the old days. Those days are more than a hundred year ago.  Examples, they   are when I did came to work and the managers sent me home many time and kept their big breast girlfriends on the floor. One more example is when I came to work and they told me if I wanted to work I had to work at the dishwasher machine.  I am a very good server but their favorites not very good serves worked on the floor.  Now, in union house they canât do that. They canât treat me like that.  Also how many restaurants non- union give health insurance or protection from over jealous manager that will fire me or make me do anything to keep my job?  When I worked at non-union restaurant to keep my job I had to accept and not fight the abuse of managers that did not have any respect t toward me.  They said to me that I should be thankful that I have that job and I should take what they were giving me or f*** off and donât bite the hands that fed me. thanks
I am working at restaurants for 30 years. I am now working in a union house for 15 year.  Before I worked at many restaurants in the Seattle area as a server but all of those places I only could stay no more than a year.  The reason was that I always told the managers or the owners to f*** their selves. The reasons I did that are because they treated me and my co-workers like we were black slaves in the old days. Those days are more than a hundred year ago.  Examples, they   are when I did came to work and the managers sent me home many time and kept their big breast girlfriends on the floor. One more example is when I came to work and they told me if I wanted to work I had to work at the dishwasher machine.  I am a very good server but their favorites not very good serves worked on the floor.  Now, in union house they canât do that. They canât treat me like that.  Also how many restaurants non- union give health insurance or protection from over jealous manager that will fire me or make me do anything to keep my job?  When I worked at non-union restaurant to keep my job I had to accept and not fight the abuse of managers that did not have any respect t toward me.  They said to me that I should be thankful that I have that job and I should take what they were giving me or f*** off and donât bite the hands that fed me.
crying unions & spendy glass junk? Â i need them as much as i need a yeast infection. Â both of U groups can go to he__.
â@TheNewsChick: Union calls for boycott of Seattle's Chihuly glass museum: http://t.co/kChuP0Dctvâ @ChihulyGG needs to live up to promises
@UniteHereLocal8Â That's OK, the rest of us are calling for a boycott of Loco 8.Â
No tipping to any members of Local 8, United Here. No patronizing of any Local 8 business. Picketing at Local 8 Union Goons... er... bosses will be at 7 am on the first Saturday of every month. Bring your baseball bats... I mean... picket signs.
Here's the Boycott List! Straight from Local 8.
http://www.unitehere8.org/?p=138
Wow! Look at all these jobs with the Union that pay six figs! And I wonder what" Brenda Watson," Special Assistant to the President (John Wilhelm, compensation:$528,399.00) does that is worth $96,400 annually?
http://www.unionfacts.com/employees/UNITE_HERE
Actually, you can patronize, just take up lots of the servers time and then stiff 'em. I am sure they won't mind.After all, they make "good " union wages, no need to embarrass them by tipping.
Who would screw the public more, Chihuly or the union?
Does not this guy have a place already in tacoma? I mean It is cool and all. I also watched his workers do the work and he signs it as his own to me that is a sham fraud and conartist at best.
@TheNewsChick did they really think they would build them. Once it is i see nothing but glass from his students.
Why all the hate towards unions? Â If it wasn't for the activism of unions, we wouldn't have the 8-hour day and 40-hour work week. Â 12 hour days 6 days a week used to be common. Â If it weren't for unions, we wouldn't have minimum wages laws. Â If it weren't for unions, there might still be child labor in this country. Â If it weren't for unions, we would still have unsafe conditions and people would be killed and maimed on the job, like in the old days, and get nothing if they were. Â If there weren't unions for coal miners, we'd still be hearing about horrible accidents in the coal mines. Â If you are a corporation or the president of a big manufacturing company, I could see where you might dislike unions. Â But any working person would be a fool not to join and support their union that represent and supports their interests. Â To blame unions for jobs going oversees is ridiculous. Â Blame the corporations who put profits before people. Â Unions are just made up of the people who belong to them. When you hate on the union, you hate on yourself and your neighbors.Â
@Miss M.  show of hands please. how many posters here are NOT gov't employees.
The unions have been responsible for lots of changes in the workplace, most of them many years ago. However the unions have moved beyond just their places of employment and getting better work conditions for the people. They have become a powerful force in politics and that isn't always beneficial to everyone. I'd like to see them get back to their original purpose.
@miss M.
I hate on the unions cuz they hate on me. A bunch of self serving individuals that could'nt care less about their neighbors or the general public.
What were you saying? Union members are more deserving than those that also work for a living?
@Miss M. In most cases, they hate any worker that has more then them, and in other cases, they tried to be in a union and were not man enough to handle the work so they went limp and cried and nobody needed them anymore, so, they hate unions, thats why.Â
They also still havent figured out that labor is marketable and union labor has had the effect of lifting terms and conditions in the non union sector. If nothing else, you'd think they'd be smart enough to leverage their own wages higher off of union scale then try and bring union scale down to their level because their level would go even lower.
They also dont realize that organized labor is just about everywhere on this planet but rather, think its some kind of unnecessary perk that US workers get.Â
Good Lord, Miss M., you are a naive one! Just WHEN was the last time a union did ANY of the things you listed as so noble? Fifty years? Sixty? Unions were formed during a time in our nations young history when abuses against workers actually happened, and there was a need for those unions. In the past fifty years, however, the ONLY things unions have done for this country has been the largest single cause inflation, driving consumer prices well beyond what those minimum wage workers could possibly afford, and then of course, the unions have brought us runaway organized crime, political corruption....the list goes on. Unions should be outlawed, quite simply. Their time has passed.   Wake up, Miss M.
@chiapetto
".... when abuses against workers actually happened ...."
So, are you saying that NO worketrs are ever abused now? You might want to read up on that - it is NOT the case.
@Miss M.
I call it the âpendulum principleâ. You were right â once upon a time. My Mother started off in the garment industry back in the 50âs, and she benefited from those very strides you mentioned, but unfortunately, too often that pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and without anyoneâs ability to check their advances. All those movies about mafia involvement â a case of whereâs thereâs smokeâ¦.. Watched the Teamsters for my Dadâs 30 years as a truck driver, and unions are far from lily-while or strictly for the workerâs benefit.
@dome200q So... you personally benefitted from the union while your family's welfare was protected and now you're a back biter? Thats so American of you. Hurray for you and screw the rest of the families huh?
The deep water disaster that killed 11 fathers wasn't in the 50s nor was the Upper Branch Massey mine explosion that killed 29 more fathers. I am glad your father made it without dying.
@dome200q There is nothing bad about a union, I do however, believe there are bad people within unions on occasion. If that is the case, then its the membership's job to vote them out.
I am sorry for the misery your family endured. I have no idea where his representation was except I am sure they would run any discipline through the grievance process and to including arbitration. They have a duty to fair representation, as well as a fiduciary responsibility under the law. When they blow that duty to fair representation, the expose the entire membership to the liability of law suits. Exposing the membership to that liability is another breech of fiduciary responsibilty. The entire grievance process, with arbitration can take easily 18 months to happen. Some unions have instant arbitration where the merits are argued in front of an arbitrator and he decides on the spot.
In terms of pay, the only fighting I am doing is for the welfare of the dependents of these boneheads that want to be slaves. I am old and retired and worked since I was 11, I know what it takes to make it to the other end of the game and you guys are kidding yourselves if you think you're going to make on the employer's good will and promises. Its rough enough with a union.
In any other business deal, you'd seek representation, why the hell would you not seek that representation when dealing with what will be everything you ever make?Â
Unions are simply groups of US citizens that happen to work together. Are you paid to tear down the wages, terms and conditions of US working families on these boards?
@T_BONE_WALKER
And you blindly not admitting there are problems with unions makes you appear as if you are paid to cruise comment sites to bolster union reputation, if that was humanly possible.
Nope. Dad wasnât one to play with something that could kill him and others. Keep reaching. Metal fatigue. Not visible with the naked eye. And just where were those âunion repsâ when PIE was putting the blame on the driver? Rhetorical, donât expect you to know. From reading your other post here I expect you to only side with those golden, un-tarnishable union gods.
Yep, you must be totally right here â the trustees can dictate that they donât have to pay life insurance just because itâs reported that the guy has diedâ¦â¦. Contract or notâ¦â¦
My beef â this un-American back-biter (your words) is retired Navy â I have no beef â but I know when I smell skunk.
So, ARE you paid to fight for the unions on these boards?
@dome200q You benefitted directly from his membership in the union and arguing over only makes you look silly.
Internally, they run under Federal Law and would be bankrupt soon and facing RICO charges if they didn't.Â
Do you think Fed Regulations require the union to make the decision on go or no go with a vehicle? Thats the driver's call under the law, union or non union. If you say it was poorly maintained, then maybe your Dad knew also?Â
In terms of payouts, you'll find that the union does not control those funds and also that the pension trust fund does. If the trustees rules have somehow ruled not in favor of your mom, I'd say your beef is with the trustees which are made up of half union and half employer representatives. Local 81 in and of itself could not possibly do anymore then make requests on behalf of your Ma.
Teamster Locals DO NOT make retirement payments nor do they have the money to, the pension trust does. Pension and med benefits are never sent to a local union.Â
Your beef is with someone else.
@T_BONE_WALKERÂ
No, while I lived at home, I benefited because my Dad was a damn good truck driver, and drove with a good partner. Take your blinders off. If you donât see that there is ALSO a problem as I and others have mentioned then you are as much of the problem as the unions are, because there is nobody internally attempting to clean things up, so it will stay that way. Itâs about time that pendulum swings back FOR the workers, but thereâs no money in that.
And as a matter of fact, my Dad had to medically retire because of a badly maintained truck (kingpin broke, spilled 7400 lbs of jet fuel, burned up Hywy 14 on the way to Camas) â and just where was the union? Busy not helping. But never fear â Teamsters Local 81 paid his death benefits last yearâ¦.. of course, he passed away in 1985, and my mother sure could have used those union dues paid benefits for the 27 years she lived in the same place that he died atâ¦
Oh, did I mention that my Mother passed away in 2008? Wasnât Local 81 fast on the pay-out?
@Miss M. What world do you live in that you have a 40 hour work week? Any employee that makes a half way decent wage is usually "Exempt" and thats not 40 hours.
Minimum wage laws are BAD. Minimum wage is not meant to be a living wage, and yet, now it is. Hurting small businesses (the backbone of this country and the biggest employer) the most. That's a fact.
"and get nothing if they were" You mean we can thank Unions for the ridiculous frivolous lawsuits that now cripple any and everything we do?
How come you make no mention of the burden placed on taxpayers to compensate the overly outrageous contracts of all public sector union employees? This is single handedly going crush and collapse our country, counties, and municipalities.
wise up Miss M. Wise up.
@Jason D. Dont be silly Jason, The country was strongest, richest, most powerful country in the world while the middle class had unions. We all have the freedom of association, the right to representation, and the right to assemble.
Minimum wage is a living wage? Thats ridiculous, a living wage is closer to $30 pr hr + benefits.Â
You need to wake up soon, the demise of our society came along about the time of the demise of our unions.
@contraryjim lol, yeah right.
@T_BONE_WALKERÂ @Jason D. You should belong to one then, I have and it was not nice- disagree with a union boss and you and/or your family was at risk.
@Miss M. And this was when ? The unions have gotten bad. Most of the dues go to the national ,who then spend the money on politicians ,how has that worked out ?  We send our dollars to the national{government,taxes} tel me how that has worked ? The more that gets sent to either ,the less we get.Â
@Maynard G Krebbs "Most of the dues go to the national ,who then spend the money on politicians"
You wouldn't have anything to back that statement up with would you? A very small percentage goes to per capita and members are not required to donate their money to any politicians.
Hows that working out for you now?
@jennieb I would say the best thing to do is to organize your existing workplace. Absent that, I'd look into the building trades but , not shack work. I doubt there is much going on right now but serve an apprenticeship maybe in the Elevator Mechanics or Operating Engineers. Pipe Trades are excellent. Go crew on a tug.
I would think they are down to 7% union density now in the private sector. I dont think of it as being for the select few, I think it is more of what a person pursues. Any time you are on the clock, you bust your ass and give them a good quality product as fast as possible, you wont have to worry about not working. They will be more worried about leaving you sit and have you get scooped up by another contractor (Their competition).Â
@T_BONE_WALKER @Maynard G Krebbs  please tell T_Bone; how does one get a union job? and what percentage of non government workers are unionized? sadly in 2013 union membership appears to be only for the select few. comments please and thank you.
@Miss M. Thank you, comrade M. Your virtue has been noted.
@arthur91644 @Miss M.I am working at restaurants for 30 years. I am now working in a union house for 15 year.  Before I worked at many restaurants in the Seattle area as a server but all of those places I only could stay no more than a year.  The reason was that I always told the managers or the owners to f*** their selves. The reasons I did that are because they treated me and my co-workers like we were black slaves in the old days. Those days are more than a hundred year ago.  Examples, they   are when I did came to work and the managers sent me home many time and kept their big breast girlfriends on the floor. One more example is when I came to work and they told me if I wanted to work I had to work at the dishwasher machine.  I am a very good server but their favorites not very good serves worked on the floor.  Now, in union house they canât do that. They canât treat me like that.  Also how many restaurants non- union give health insurance or protection from over jealous manager that will fire me or make me do anything to keep my job?  When I worked at non-union restaurant to keep my job I had to accept and not fight the abuse of managers that did not have any respect t toward me.  They said to me that I should be thankful that I have that job and I should take what they were giving me or f*** off and donât bite the hands that fed me.
first of all, did you expect anything else but this? Remember, it's McSchwinn who negotiated this deal. It's a given scam like everything he touches. Second of all, yeah, I hope it goes to the lowest bidder but I totally support the union for bringing this up and holding the mayor to his agreement. Third and last, it's Chihuly . I dont expect any 'competition' will be allowed. Go to the Tacoma Glass museum. It's a closed system. No competition anywhere. Again, nothing new. Moving on.
@AverageJoe Yeah the one eyed wonder who hates any one else who would do glass art. Demonizes them shuts them out will not let other artist show their work any were his is. what is he afraid of? Competition.
@Exiled_Patriot @AverageJoe Which is kind of funny since he himself has not done any glass since the 70's. He only signs them.
Local 8 also has its own reasons for calling the boycott. According to the union, Space Needle workers were assured banquet jobs at Chihuly Garden and Glass would go to them. Instead, they claim the Space Needle is subcontracting the jobs to the lowest bidder.
Seems to me, they should have gotten that in writing.. if they didn't, then it is the unions failure to protect its members.
I don't have any issues with anyone, union or not, bringing attention to an agreement that isn't being upheld on the part of a company not doing what they agreed to.
If the Space Needle made that agreement, the union should be able to show who made the agreement, when it was made, and who all was in the meeting when that agreement was made. (verbal or otherwise)
Where is the city's attorney? Cancel the lease. Open it as a shooting range. Start with sling shots and bb guns and move up to the BIG GUNS..Â
That sounds like a good plan.. The city can use all the guns collected in the gun buyback program, and charge for ammunition used... (at twice the related cost)
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@NickyHarts1Â Spammer!
@Glassman @NickyHarts1 And reported to KOMO as such.......
The point should be this is NOT a museum . it is a store to sell a product ,the same as the one in Tacoma. Why should any public funds or land be used for a store if they don't pay rent .Â
Well if the Union tells me to boycott... I guess the wife and I should go down and see this place... if there is still a non-tolled road to get there that is!
Seattle Center has been dead for years its like trying to revive a cadaver...
And this Chihuly mess will revive it??? I wonder what the attendance is like at the museum - anyone know?
@Silvia Boring! Look at glass objects that don't move and you can't touch them. Must really be exciting for kids! So they have one in Tacoma and figured it was such a hit that they built one in Seattle??
People, local consumers were not the target audience....Tourist were so your protest wont have much impact when you consider the ratio of locals and tourist in Seattle