The strike authorization vote does not mean that the workers will go on strike—just that they are ready to.
Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden workers are ready to strike as tensions escalate with the Richmond nonprofit’s management over a first union contract that has been more than a year in the making.
Workers voted Wednesday to authorize their union to call a strike if needed amidst contentious contract negotiations for roughly 60 employees at the Richmond landmark. The union declined to share the vote breakdown, but said the measure was approved by 95%.
The strike authorization vote does not mean workers will go on strike—just that they are ready to do so. It comes after weeks of informational picketing to raise awareness about their wage demands and pressure management.
At a breaking point
Workers like horticulturist Eryn Boyle “are at a breaking point right now and we’re not happy” with Lewis Ginter’s management, she said.
“It’s just been disappointing the way that they’ve handled it,” Boyle said in an interview. “I didn’t think it would take this long to get a contract.”
Workers earn an average of $17.25 an hour. After initially seeking a $3.50 raise, they scaled back their ask to $1 across the board in March.
Lewis Ginter initially countered with a 50 cent raise, increased that to 75 cents, and in April proposed a raise of 2.5%, which amounts to an average increase of about 40 cents, according to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM Union), the union representing the Lewis Ginter workers.
A Lewis Ginter spokesperson said in a statement to Dogwood that the botanical garden “continues to negotiate with the IAM Union in good faith during our ongoing collective bargaining process.”
In 2024, Lewis Ginter President Brian Trader made $220,183 in “reportable compensation” and $16,086 in other compensation, according to a filing with the IRS. That was the same year Lewis Ginter workers voted to join IAM Union.
“I knew they would be stingy, but I really didn’t think it would be this bad,” Boyle said of Lewis Ginter.
IAM Union has filed a formal complaint with the National Labor Relations Board accusing Lewis Ginter of not bargaining in good faith.
The union says that the 2.5% pay increase proposed by Lewis Ginter amounts to a smaller pay increase than the nonprofit’s negotiators initially proposed. The union alleges that making a lower offer than what was previously proposed violates federal labor law’s requirement that employers bargain in good faith.
Low pay, high turnover
Conservatory horticulturist Clare Reines says Lewis Ginter “loses people left and right” because the pay there is so low. The people who stay make it work either by going without or relying on help from family, Reines said.
Still, many people who get hired at Lewis Ginter love the work. Reine called it “a once in a lifetime place to work.”
“It’s really sad to see people walk away from something because of money and because of the stubbornness of an organization,” Reines said in an interview.
One key demand that the union says Lewis Ginter has rejected was a stipend for workers like Reines and Boyle to pay for work clothes, especially steel-toed shoes. Reines said she wears them after seeing a co-worker who was wearing soft-toed shoes drop a log and break his foot. And then there’s the wear and tear on their clothes from working in the garden.
“All of us blow through work pants because they get ruined, shirts get ruined,” Reines said. “When you’re doing outdoor manual labor, stuff gets ruined, and if you’re not compensating us appropriately to be able to handle the burden of that, then there needs to be a stipend.”
The Lewis Ginter campaign has drawn wider attention in the botanical garden world. Workers at Norfolk Botanical Garden voted to unionize with IAM Union in July 2025, citing the Richmond workers as inspiration. Union membership in Virginia has risen from 3.7% in 2019 to 5.4% in 2025.
This story was updated after publication to include a statement from Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.
