Workers rallied outside the History Center in Saint Paul on Thursday. (AFSCME photo)

Union members are demanding answers from Minnesota Historical Society executives after a shakeup that will result in 36 layoffs and reduced access to sites and materials maintained by the organization.

“We want to see the receipts,” AFSCME Local 3173 President Jacob Rorem said.

The layoffs, announced July 28, impacted 28 members of the bargaining unit, which covers about 80% of MNHS’s workforce. A few members will be able to continue their employment with MNHS by transferring to open positions.

MNHS laid off seven workers in June 2024, and management had been hinting at deeper cuts to come. They cite a structural deficit, as revenues from membership sales and site fees, state allocations, grant funding and other sources have not kept up with rising costs.

While the layoffs did not come as a shock, Rorem said, the lack of transparency about what factored into the decision-making process has left union members frustrated with management – and anxious about MNHS’s future.

“It’s been a hard week and a half as people try to process the news,” Rorem said. “We know there’s a budget problem, but there hasn’t been a clear explanation as to how these cuts are going to help address that – what the decision-making process was, what the evidence or data they were using to make these decisions was.

“It’s something we are continuing to press because even if we … don’t necessarily agree with those decisions, we have a right to understand them and understand how (management) is stewarding the resources of our organization and of the state.”

One thing is clear: the restructuring will reduce public-facing services offered by MNHS.

The plan will eliminate regular summer programming – and most staff – at three sites: the Charles Lindbergh House in Little Falls, Historic Forestville in Preston and the Snake River Fur Post in Pine City.

All three sites will offer visitors free, self-guided tours instead.

Lacey Fontaine, a program associate at the Lindbergh House, said she and all but one of her co-workers, the site manager, will lose their jobs when the season ends Aug. 31.

“We’re eliminating positions that actually help the public,” Fontaine said. “We are the face of the Historical Society, not necessarily the people making these decisions in the background.”

Visitors, meanwhile, will lose the opportunity to engage with staff members like Fontaine, who holds a master’s degree in public history, about issues that still resonate today.

“As complicated as Charles Lindbergh was, he was good at one thing, and that was initiating dialogue with the public,” she said. “We’re losing all that important dialogue, that education and the discussion about where historic figures fit into our lives today.

“In today’s political climate, I don’t think that’s the best thing.”

Layoffs also targeted four workers in the Gale Family Library at the History Center in St. Paul.

As a result, the research library will no longer hold public visiting hours and, instead, will require visitors to schedule appointments.

Rorem said the change would impact historians, people doing ancestry and genealogy projects and journalists working on a deadline. “Most of the time they do not want to plan that far ahead,” he said.

Many challenges facing MNHS are also playing out at museums and cultural institutions nationwide, like falling attendance levels since the pandemic and a decline in philanthropic giving.

The union drive, too, may have played in a role, Rorem acknowledged, by forcing MNHS leadership to reckon with “a business model that existed for a long time that relied on low wages, on people dedicating themselves to the mission of an organization and sacrificing in terms of wages and benefits.”

MNHS workers voted overwhelmingly to form their union in November 2021 and ratified their first contract in March 2023. The bargaining unit, affiliated with AFSCME Council 5, brings together over 200 workers.

“We’ve been able to raise wages for a big chunk of our bargaining unit by a huge amount,” Rorem said. “We have six weeks of paid parental leave that we didn’t have before. We have protections from arbitrary or unfair discipline.

“It’s been really valued by our membership.”

Rorem called it a “disheartening and scary” time for workers at institutions like MNHS, and he said the union would appeal to the public, including state lawmakers, to step up support for the organization and its mission – and to hold its leadership accountable.

“We have a mission to serve the public,” he said. “The resources we take care of are the resources of the people of Minnesota. We’d love them to continue to visit us and utilize what we have.”

Fontaine said she’s already on the hunt for a new job where she can continue engaging people in conversations about how the past influences the present.

“If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, but I’m hoping things will shift in the future where I can rejoin this business,” she said.

“We’re losing that connection to history, and it’s really sad.”