A labor union and former workers at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden on Thursday challenged Phipps' public funding.
About 40 cooks, dishwashers, cashiers, janitors and event staff were laid off last month when Phipps ended its contract with food-service company Sodexo Live! The employees had been seeking union recognition with the Service Employees International Union 32BJ. Phipps said it ended the contract because the café and catering services were losing money.
On Thursday, four former Phipps workers and a dozen SEIU representatives attended the Allegheny Regional Asset District board meeting Downtown. Speakers asked the board to limit Phipps to its minimum funding until its complaints about the Conservatory are addressed.
“Receiving taxpayer dollars means they should be investing in their community members, which includes their contracted workers,” former café cashier Sarah LaFiura told the board.
RAD is funded by the county's 1% sales tax. Phipps, whose 2023-24 budget was $21 million, is one of RAD’s contractual assets, meaning RAD funds it every year. For 2025, that means a $2.9 million operating grant and an additional $1 million for a capital project.
The minimum RAD grant to Phipps would be considerably less: RAD is contracted to grant Phipps $1.82 million annually through 2029, though it can provide more at the board's discretion.
32BJ SEIU Western Pennsylvania district leader Pete Schmidt told the board the union believes Phipps violated its funding agreement with RAD, which requires grant recipients to “provide timely notice” of important changes to its operations, budget or mission statement. Schmidt contended Phipps should have informed RAD of the closure of its café and suspension of its catering operations.
“If the board finds that Phipps has violated the terms of the agreement, we ask that RAD exercise its discretion and restrict Phipps annual award to the minimum guaranteed by the agreement,” Schmidt said.
Phipps gets another public subsidy as well. Its sprawling facility is situated on city-owned property in Schenley Park, and under a longstanding agreement the group pays just $1 a year in rent.
Schmidt told the board those two subsidies were enough to require Phipps to abide by the City of Pittsburgh’s prevailing-wage law. Under that law, said Schmidt, the workers would have been paid about $27 an hour in wages and supplemental benefit payments, considerably more than most were getting.
Schmidt said that last week, the union filed a prevailing-wage complaint on behalf of the workers. (The union later confirmed the complaint was filed Feb. 3 with the city’s Office of Equal Protection.)
Also addressing the board was City Councilor and Phipps board member Bob Charland.
“Phipps has not held its end of the bargain with its workers,” said Charland, who noted that he was a former service worker. “I urge the board here to help us hold Phipps accountable — help me, with my board here [at] Phipps, hold ourselves accountable”
In a statement, a RAD spokesperson said, “We are reviewing all compliance measures to ensure that Phipps is meeting its contractual obligations to receive RAD funds.”
In an emailed statement, Phipps said it had not been notified of a prevailing-wage complaint and added, “We strongly disagree with the characterization that we have violated any terms of our agreement with RAD, which we have honored diligently since RAD’s inception.”
Phipps' cafe and catering operations have been closed since Jan. 12. "Phipps is still evaluating new models for the Café, but nothing has been determined yet," wrote a spokesperson in a statement.
