Yesterday marked 50 days of strike action by Public and Commercial Services Union members at the National Gallery this year, as they continue to campaign against privatisation.
The strikes mean that members of the PSC union have been on stike for almost a quarter of the year so far.
The National Gallery has said that there will be limited public access to some areas of the Gallery due to the ongoing strike action this week. The National Gallery has said that the strike action is caused by members of the PCS union who oppose its “modernisation programme”.
In a statement the Gallery, which wants to privatise 400 of its 600 staff, said: “The National Gallery is a public asset and we have a duty to ensure the collection and the Gallery itself is accessible as much as possible to as many people as possible.
“We take this task seriously and our ongoing modernisation programme is designed to encourage a broader (and younger) audience to access the wealth of cultural inspiration the National Gallery has to offer. In particular, we have ambitious plans to extend further our education programme and public events.”
It has confirmed that there will be no job losses as part of the modernisation programme and “terms and conditions will be protected”.
The union is calling for senior managers and trustees to return to negotiations to avoid privatisation. It says it is “actively considering escalating strikes from mid-August when the new director Gabriele Finaldi and new chair of trustees Hannah Rothschild are due to take over”.
PCS’s general secretary, Mark Serwotka, last week wrote to all trustees at the National Gallery to “formally request talks on detailed proposals submitted by the union for new flexible contracts to provide the cover the gallery says it needs for core working hours and late night opening”.
Serwotka said: "Our members are in the process of voting on an escalation of the industrial action from the middle of August 2015 if a negotiated settlement has not been reached."
A senior representative at PCS, Candy Udwin, was formally dismissed last month from her role as a shop steward at the National Gallery following a disciplinary hearing. She had been suspended on the eve of the first strikes in February.
The union has said that it believes the sacking to be “a clear case of victimisation and a direct attempt to undermine our union and we will fight it every step of the way”.
