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In 2023, labor, unions, and salaries were up for discussion and debate in architecture

2023-12-24T08:00:00-05:00

At the end of last year, we described 2022 as the year that “architecture’s labor movement roared back to life.” In 2023, the movement kept the volume on 'high.' Across the U.S. and internationally, reforms in labor conditions continued from the top down and the bottom up.

Throughout the year, worker-led movements across both academia and practice exercised their right to form a union, as well as their right to strike against unfair or unsatisfactory working conditions. Meanwhile, conversations over working conditions in design studios were joined by concerns over treatment and protections for construction workers.

In tandem with conversations over workplace conditions, moves were also made to improve salary transparency, whether from the passing of new laws on a state level, or workers themselves taking the initiative to collect and share salary information.

To further explore these trends, we have set out the key developments and stories throughout 2023 related to topics surroundi...

Architecture's controversies in 2022: The industry continued to be scarred by strife and scandal

2022-12-21T08:00:00-05:00

The year’s end brings the chance to survey architecture’s progression and social impact through salient entryways that include labor, activism, and the development of topical building trends.

Another way of recapping things is by looking at the varied rows, discord, stories of ill-treatment, and critical reactions to certain projects that shape the way the architecture progresses and is viewed by the broader public. With everything from conflict to college dorms domineering the news cycle, our coverage has been as influenced by current events as it was by goings-on inside halls of higher learning and professional practice.

Previously on Archinect: Updated Munger Hall images show two floors removed as controversial project seeks approval

Twelve months ago, we documented what happened once the industry began to recover from a years-long pandemic-plagued economy. What followed was a year marked by new pinnacles and uncertainty within the industry. With an eye for the murkiness that ha...

In 2022, architecture's labor movement roared back to life

2022-12-19T12:34:00-05:00

In any future analysis of architectural workplace conditions, the impact of 2022 cannot be understated. Throughout the year, our editorial played host to a wide variety of labor-related developments in the profession, from top-down efforts to improve salary transparency to bottom-up unionization drives across the United States and the world.

Notwithstanding decisions by lawmakers and firm principals to reform laws and business structures, respectively, the seismic shifts in architectural labor conditions were predominantly the results of grassroots efforts. Union groups such as Architectural Workers United and Bernheimer Architecture Union set valuable precedents for workers seeking to collectively organize in the years ahead, while The Architecture Lobby set out a vision for the profession that dispels the employee-employer relationship entirely.

Beyond the U.S., meanwhile, grassroots groups led to the formation of a union in Portugal, strike action and salary disclosure platforms...

Dissatisfied architects ‘would caution others against working in profession’ says union coalition survey

2022-10-14T14:01:00-04:00

A survey of architectural professionals conducted by a U.S. union coalition has revealed widespread dissatisfaction with pay, hours, and agency in workplace decisions. The survey of 436 professionals was led by the Department for Professional Employees, whose 24 affiliated unions include the IAM union which oversaw the recent unionizing effort at SHoP in New York City.

The survey, launched in April, found that architecture workers are eager for reforms in their workplace, with 90% wanting to see changes to working conditions. 63% of respondents report having little or no voice in policymaking at their firm, while 55% fear retaliation for speaking out about issues at their firm. 39% of respondents also believe their employers have not taken any steps to address diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.

Survey presentation extract. Image credit: Department for Professional Employees

Despite several high-profile developments in the union movement in 2022, 83% of respondents sai...

How Singapore’s architects are responding to low wages and fees

2022-07-04T13:30:00-04:00

As Archinect has explored through numerous feature articles, the U.S. architecture profession faces deep ongoing challenges surrounding salaries, fee levels, and work-life balances. In a sign that such conditions are not confined to the U.S., recent years have seen architectural worker movements emerge elsewhere, including the formation of unions and worker-led activist groups in the United Kingdom.

In Singapore, where only 7% of young architecture graduates say they are likely to stay in the profession in the long term, the state’s architecture body is taking action to avoid an “alarming” brain drain.

Like the United States, Singapore’s competition laws prevent architects, or architectural institutions like the Singapore Institute of Architects, from establishing fee scales. As we outlined in our recent feature on unionization in architecture, such restrictions are a primary factor in supressing fees and wages in the profession.

Archinect Feature: Unionization in Architecture: Rev...

RIBA sparks outcry from activists by tightening election voting rules for new members

2022-05-12T11:48:00-04:00

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has changed its election rules for the 2022 Presidential election, meaning those who joined the institute after April 23rd are not able to vote. The move, first reported by the Architects' Journal this week, has sparked outrage from a grassroots campaign to elect an architectural worker to the role, who describe the move as an exclusionary tactic.

In the previous RIBA Presidential election, held in 2020, the election rules stated that “the electorate shall comprise the current Members of the RIBA in all categories (save for Honorary Fellows).”

This therefore allowed RIBA chartered members (qualified architects), RIBA associate members (with a Masters qualification in the UK or EU), RIBA affiliate members (with an Undergraduate qualification in the UK), and RIBA student members (currently studying at university), to all cast a vote.

Survey launches to shape unionization efforts in architecture

2022-04-07T09:00:00-04:00

The Department for Professional Employees (DPE), a coalition of U.S.-based unions, has launched a survey seeking to understand the unionization landscape in the architectural profession. The group’s 24 affiliated unions span from artists to school administrators as well as the IAM union which oversaw the recent unionizing effort at SHoP in New York City.

The survey was launched in the wake of the efforts at SHoP and is aimed at collecting views from architectural workers on current conditions in the industry. The results of the survey will also help DPE shape their plans to support future union efforts in architecture.

“We’ve heard rumblings of dissatisfaction among employees in architectural occupations and professions and want to help them organize to create a better industry,” DPE President Jennifer Dorning told Archinect. “With our survey for architectural professionals, we are hoping to get a better sense of the most important workplace issues and how we can best support archit...

A group of UK architects is pushing for youth movement at the top of RIBA’s leadership

2022-03-24T15:11:00-04:00

Petitioners in the UK are bidding to have an early-career architectural worker elected as the next RIBA president as a change of direction for the 188-year-old organization which they charge as “losing touch with architects, students, and the next generation of talent.”

In an open letter obtained by AJ, the group of signatories, led by Future Architects Network founder Simeon Shtebunaev, the architecture union UVW-SAW, and the Future Architects’ Front, which has been a vocal critic of RIBA’s inability to tackle the industry’s “culture of exploitation” since its inception last year.

“As student loans increase and the length of architecture courses stay the same, people are asking if the unethical working conditions merit the payoff,” RIBA’s VP for students and associates Maryam Al-Irhayim, who is also a co-signer of the letter, told the publication. “There is a lack of job security, too, as seen in the pandemic where most young people were first to be let go.”

Related on Archinect: A...

Unpaid internships 'deepen existing barriers' for emerging architects, says NCARB

2021-10-19T13:24:00-04:00

The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) has released a statement reaffirming its opposition to unpaid internships in architecture as well as offering advice for how firms and students can help combat the issue.

Under NCARB’s licensure rules, employers are required to compensate all students and licensure candidates for their work, regardless of duration or experience level. NCARB’s AXP Guidelines also state that “unpaid internships are not eligible to earn experience hours” with exceptions made for certain experiences garnered outside of architecture firms.

More broadly, the 1938 U.S. Fair Labor Standards Act demands that interns be paid at least the minimum wage, apart from a handful of exceptional circumstances including work shadowing, education, and an absence of financial benefit to the employer from the intern’s work.

“We believe that all e...

Architecture Lobby expresses solidarity with UK’s architectural assistants

2021-03-24T19:28:00-04:00

The Architecture Lobby, an organization familiar to most of our readers, dedicated to elevating the value of architecture and architectural work, has shared with us a letter they penned in support of the Future Architects Fronts’ open letter to RIBA.

The Future Architects Front is a UK-based campaign that fights to end the exploitation of the next generation of architects. Their letter to the Royal Institute of British Architects has been signed by over 850 "architectural assistants," a UK-specific job title similar to an intern in the US, representing an architectural student or graduate with limited practical experience.

The letter describes the problematic path the licensure/qualification, an issue American architects can surely relate to, and includes the results from a survey they conducted in December 2020. The letter outlines a reasonable list of expectations, including, but not limited to, an end to unpaid overtime, more oversight on the job role, and greater transparen...

Architecture: Professional calling or exploitative trap?

2019-08-19T18:30:00-04:00

The myth of the calling obscures the role of architectural support staff and encourages architects to surrender their workers’ rights. It stands in the way of solidarity between all architectural workers.

Writing in Failed Architecture, Marisa Cortright unpacks how the sense of unwavering duty implied by the architecture profession’s persistent reliance on hero myths and the idea of architecture as a calling undermines both the individual and collective interests of architectural workers, including those of non-architects like the administrative, finance, legal, public relations and business development professionals often employed by architecture firms.

The case for a trade union for architects

2019-07-18T18:22:00-04:00

Faced with this level of acquiescence, the case for unionising the profession becomes compelling. As a regulator of working conditions and a protective body for workers, a trade union would force the industry to adapt to healthier working conditions; without these decisions being left to the leading staff and management who are themselves usually under pressure to attain expected productivity levels.

While Eleanor Hill's Failed Architecture piece looks specifically at the missed opportunity of British architects to formally unionize, the argument for organized representation could be applied to the profession on a broader global level.

"The specialisation of labour and consequent creation of more hierarchies in the workplace has also led to an increasingly fragmented and divided workforce," Hill writes.

"Architecture offices today have a myriad of individual workers in different roles: the design-team alone can have five different kinds of architectural professional working on one project, and that’s without considering the many other support staff, such as marketing, human resources, front of house and any premises workers, who contribute to the business. While interpersonal divisions are a bad reason to accept poor working conditions, this extreme fragmentation between different roles may well be one of the factors preventing architecture workers from standing united in their...