JAY-PAUL
Members of LGBG Workers United picket outside Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in September.
A garden-variety union strike, this is not.
For nearly a month, the picketers at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden have been waving, chanting, and asking visitors and vendors who enter the nonprofit’s main entrance on Lakeside Avenue to turn around and leave.
“Don’t come back until we get a fair contract!”
They’re certain it’s working. On a recent Friday afternoon, Bracken Carter, coordinator of the Learning Garden at Lewis Ginter and a member of Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden Workers United, part of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Local Lodge 10, holds a clicker while standing on the sidewalk. So far, six cars have stopped, turned around and left at the request of Carter and two garden horticulturalists, also union members.
“One of the days we had at least 42,” Carter says.
“We didn’t think to get a clicker until, like, last week,” bemoans Clare Reines, the conservatory horticulturalist, with a tinge of sarcasm.
It was actually two weeks ago, Carter says, but that’s beside the point. After reaching an impasse with garden management earlier this summer over low pay, LGBG Workers United voted to go on permanent strike Sept. 2. The union says the average wage within the bargaining unit is $17.52 an hour, well below the $23.36 “living wage” required for a single adult to support themselves in Richmond, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator.
Nearly two years after organizing, union reps and garden management remain a world apart on how much its groundskeepers, horticulturalists, educators, guest services workers and other hourly employees should be paid. The union originally proposed a $3.50-an-hour pay increase but has since dropped the request to $1.90 an hour.
The union says the garden’s last offer in mid-August was a 3% pay raise, which translates to about 52 cents an hour, on average. In a statement released in early September, Lewis Ginter counters that the nonprofit has steadily increased worker pay over several years.
“Even prior to unionization, the Garden worked diligently to increase wages. As a result, it currently offers wages comparable to other place-based, cultural non-profits such as museums and botanical gardens, and pays well above minimum wage,” the statement reads. “Wages have increased 60% over the baseline in 2020. … The Machinists’ current demand for an immediate approximately 11.4% wage increase for unionized staff, followed by additional increases in subsequent years, is simply not a sustainable approach for an organization that does not make a profit and must budget on a year-to-year basis.”
As nonprofits go, Lewis Ginter ended fiscal year 2025 with $13.5 million in total revenue, clearing $2.8 million in net income after expenses, with $43 million in total assets. That doesn’t include the foundation’s $29 million endowment, according to audited financials. Some of that money, however, is restricted for capital projects and cannot be used to cover operational expenses.
Regardless, the negotiating gap remains wide. Reached on Thursday, Bridget Fitzgerald, an IAM organizer representing LGBG Workers United, says the negotiations remain at a standstill. They’ve heard little from management since the daily strike began more than three weeks ago.
“If you look at the rate of inflation versus the rate of wage increases, it’s just not keeping up. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, which is exactly what’s happening at Lewis Ginter,” she says. “You’re giving them an extra 50 cents an hour? That’s not even close enough to buy a gallon of gas.”
The battle has become litigious, with Lewis Ginter petitioning the court to issue an injunction against the picketers, claiming that union members have obstructed vehicles from entering the garden; “yelled at and intimidated” employees, visitors and contractors; and even caused a vehicular accident on Sept. 7.
The union denies those charges. As of publication, no court date had been set.
JAY-PAUL
Conservatory horticulturalist Clare Reines (left) says the strike will continue “as long as it needs to.”
Mary Heather Parch, chief marketing and experience officer at Lewis Ginter, says the garden respects the union’s right to strike and protest on the public sidewalk, but worries the picket line is spilling onto private property and causing safety issues. “We just want people to be following what’s already stated in Virginia law,” she says.
The union, however, sees the legal action as a desperate attempt to sway public opinion. It’s becoming clear, organizers say, that the strike is having an impact. Reines, the horticulturalist and member of the organizing team, says attendance on Labor Day, for example, was down 60% compared to last year. Parch declined to comment, explaining that the garden doesn’t publicly release daily attendance figures.
Earlier this summer, after two one-day strikes and a public call to boycott Lewis Ginter, several musicians canceled concerts at the garden, including Jesse Welles and Graham Nash. In a July 31 letter to “garden patrons” obtained by WRIC, Lewis Ginter’s president and CEO, Brian Trader, said the “operational disruptions and the cancellation of concerts” had already resulted “in the loss of tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.”
The losses will only grow if the labor dispute isn’t resolved before the holidays. Lewis Ginter’s signature event, GardenFest of Lights, begins Nov. 23. With nearly half of the garden’s employees on strike, preparations and staffing for the six-week event would be challenging, to say the least. Preparation for GardenFest kicks off in late September, Reines says. Parch, the garden’s spokesperson, says the event will go on as planned.
“In the horticulture world and also in our programming world, this is a busy time,” Carter explains. “I think that the general public doesn’t have much of an understanding of how much labor this takes, and how intense and specialized so many of our jobs are.”
That may soon change. In a right-to-work state like Virginia, picket lines are relatively uncommon, especially among nonprofit workforces. For prominent, mission-driven cultural institutions like Lewis Ginter, it’s even more unusual.
Meanwhile, in the current political environment, support for labor unions is growing. As the wage gap widens, inflation continues to spike and more families struggle to make ends meet, Gallup’s recent work and education poll found that 71% of Americans support labor unions, with 47% wanting unions to have more influence.
“Those are numbers that we haven’t seen since the 1960s,” says Victor Chen, a sociology professor who specializes in labor issues at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It did dip quite a bit during the Great Recession, or in the aftermath of the Great Recession … but in recent years it’s gone the other way. I would say a lot of that [has to do with] concerns about inequality, right? That folks are feeling that there’s no one fighting for them.”
For now, at least, that doesn’t appear to be the case for LGBG Workers United. On Saturday, Sept. 26, the Communist League of Richmond is hosting an event on Lakeside Avenue in front of Lewis Ginter, calling on “DJs, artists, musicians and every worker in the city” to show up and support the garden’s union workers.
No one seems to know what will happen next. Reines, the horticulturalist, says the strike will last “as long as it needs to.”
“I don’t really feel like we can speak on the timeline because it’s up to them,” she says of Lewis Ginter’s management. “As soon as they come to the table with a fair wage offer, this will end.”
