Strikes - National Gallery fights back (ctd.)
February 9 2015
Picture: Museums Journal
Further to my below post on the continued strikes at the National Gallery, I was well and truly trolled by someone claiming to be a Gallery employee. I have posted the more coherent comments (It's not always entirely clear what he is trying to say) as updates to the original post. Although the correspondent supplied a name, and really exists (he has his own website) I won't name him - if he genuinely is a Gallery employee, I'm not sure his conduct does him any favours.
Anyway, the employee's chief claim was that in his four years of working at the Gallery, there had been only one strike. This was contrary to the Gallery's assertion that over the last nine years there had been on average a strike of some description every two months.
So I asked the Gallery for more details of the 'every two months' claim. And here are some of the numbers: between 2006 and 2007 there were 45 separate PCS union walk outs over annual leave entitlement; between February and May 2010 there were 8 over pay; between January and August 2012 there were 6 over invigilation methods. In addition, PCS members participate in all national strike initiatives, such as that which affected the Gallery in October last year. Then we have the five day strike this year. Even excluding the five days this year, there have been 59 separate walk outs by PCS members since July 2006. Divide 103 months up until December 2014 by 59 walk outs, and you get the once every two month average.
It's also worth noting that the recent 5 day strike saw a protest to reinstate a suspended Gallery employee, Candy Udwin. Udwin, an adminstrator in the art handling department and elected union representative, was, according to Union Solidarity International:
[...] part of the PCS negotiating team in talks at ACAS on Friday, [and] has been accused of breaching commercial confidentiality by sharing a document with her full time union official – which included information about the costs of using a private company – and asking him to take up the matter with gallery management.
Udwin is on the executive committee of PCS's culture, media and sport occupational association. She is a member of the Socialist Worker's Party, and in 2000 was expelled from Unison over strike activities at UCL hospital in London. Before joining the Gallery she was a medical administrator.
It seems the Gallery and the PCS union are further apart than ever before. Will there be more strikes to come?
