Museum, school hire anti-worker firms to fight employees

MuseumSchoolPressAICWU Direct
Written By AIC WU

In an attempt to target and undermine us, their own employees, AIC/SAIC senior leadership has hired the management-side law firm of Cozen O’Connor and the PR consultancy Reputation Partners to fight our choice to organize.

Already the Cozen/Reputation Partners anti-worker campaign has deployed rhetoric and tactics common in the anti-union industry, including:

  • Repeated all-staff emails to oppose our union;

  • Training sessions to coach managers in anti-union talking points;

  • Misinformation telling employees that they’re ineligible for union representation (only the National Labor Relations Board can make that determination!); and

  • Stifling open forums, such as a recent museum all-staff meeting where management abruptly stopped taking questions after hearing initially from some of us.

Big bucks for union busters

Cozen O’Connor is a Philadelphia-based law firm that claims to have 775 attorneys and represents large corporations. The three Cozen attorneys retained by AIC—Anna Wermuth, David Barron and Steven Millman—have defended corporations against class action claims for wage theft and discrimination. Wermuth represented Northwestern University in its successful effort to prevent its athletes from forming a union, while Barron has defended grocery giant Kroger in anti-discrimination cases.

Court records show that in 2017, Barron was billing $430 per hour and Wermuth was billing $315 per hour.

Reputation Partners, a Chicago-based PR and crisis management firm that specializes in anti-union communications, has assigned founder and president Nick Kalm, executive vice president Andrew Moyer and senior vice president Brendan Griffith to the project.

In 2019, Reputation Partners charged $390 an hour for Kalm, $345 per hour for Moyer and $325 per hour for Griffith, documents show. Their rates may very well be higher now.

Reputation Partners has a history of anti-union consulting. In 2003 it helped a company called Chef Solutions fight its employees’ efforts to organize; the company was accused of tolerating the sexual abuse of immigrant women and faced 20 unfair labor practice charges.



Taking money from our mission is wrong

“We think it’s wrong for AIC and SAIC leadership to divert one penny away from our mission to pay these corporate lawyers and PR consultants for the purpose of attacking us, their own employees,” said Mike Zapata, an academic advisor at SAIC and a member of the AICWU organizing committee.

“We think museum patrons and school students and alumni would be upset to know this is happening at the same time that senior leadership told staff they’re projecting a budget deficit for the 2022 fiscal year,” said organizing committee member Myia Brown, assistant director of career and professional experience at SAIC.

“We work at the museum and school because we love them, and we’re forming our union because we want to make them better places to work, learn and visit,” said AICWU organizing committee member Sheila Majumdar, an editor at AIC. “As employees we understand that when we hear anti-worker, anti-union claims from management, that’s really these big-money consultants talking. We won’t be fooled.”

“We want every AIC visitor and SAIC student to know where their money is going right now: Senior leadership is draining it away from our mission to give to corporate lawyers and PR consultants to attack us, the employees who make the museum and the school happen,” said Anna Feuer, an organizing committee member who works in the museum’s library. “It’s wrong and it should stop.”

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