Museums & Institutions
‘We’ve Reached a Tipping Point’: Inside the Labor Unrest Gripping U.K. Museums
Union membership is rising among culture workers after years of stagnating wages.
After weeks of balloting, staff at the V&A voted overwhelmingly to strike, it was announced on Friday, with 95 percent backing industrial action across the museum’s four London sites in a dispute over pay and conditions. This strike is likely to go ahead in the coming weeks, unless progress is made on an agreement between the museum and its workers.
The vote, organized by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), which represents thousands of employees across Britain’s heritage sector, is the latest flashpoint in a growing wave of labor actions that has swept Britain’s major museums since the pandemic. Staff at the British Museum, the Science Museum, British Library, and Tate, among others, have all walked out in recent years as unions such as PCS and Prospect coordinate campaigns accusing institutions of mistreating their staff and letting wages fall behind the cost of living.
“Museum workers are fed up with the way they’ve been treated by management,” PCS Culture Group Secretary Nicholas Marro said. “They’re sick of the pay restraints and they’re sick of the disrespect.”
V&A staff voting in two previous polls organized by Prospect, another trade union that represents more than 10,000 workers in the museum and heritage industries, in July also opted overwhelmingly for walkouts.
“I think we’ve reached a tipping point,” Jamie Parkinson, a negotiations officer at Prospect, said.
‘Highly Demoralizing’ Working Conditions
V&A staff who spoke to Artnet News as the balloting was taking place, said that low pay, combined with the high cost of living in London, was a major issue for them. A floor assistant said she is making £27,000 ($36,800) a year, while a conservator is on £29,000 ($39,500).
A single working-age adult needs a gross annual salary of £54,400 ($74,200) for Inner London or £48,200 ($65,700) for Outer London to reach the Minimum Income Standard, according to a report released earlier this year by Trust for London, an advocacy group that combats urban poverty and inequality.
One worker said that seeing the museum raise $180 million to open V&A East and $88 million for its open storage facility, V&A East Storehouse, while simultaneously paying its staff so poorly was “highly demoralizing,” adding that “joining a union gets results.”
As well as better pay, other union requests include allowing staff at V&A East Storehouse to carry water bottles, like their colleagues in South Kensington, and the closure of all public spaces across the V&A’s four sites when the temperature hits 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) due to an alleged lack of adequate air conditioning, in particular at V&A South Kensington.
“What we’re asking for is affordable and every single one of these matters could be resolved in negotiations,” said Marro, adding that organizers have been attempting to resolve these problems for over a year before taking strike action. “But when we raise the water issue, for example, the V&A says they ‘don’t consider it important.’ When we discuss pay, they make minuscule offers, they’re fundamentally unserious.”
“We deeply regret that the trade unions have voted for strike action,” a V&A spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the museum’s officials have been negotiating “in good faith” since February and have met most of the unions’ demands with an improved offer they consider “fair, competitive, and affordable.” The latest offer delivered an average 4.18 percent pay rise (including a 6.9 percent increase for the lowest-paid roles); an increase in bank holiday pay to 1.5 times the standard hourly rate; and what the museum termed a “sector-leading” bonus scheme.
“We value our staff enormously and remain fully committed to providing safe, supportive working environments in all our museums,” the statement reads. The statement says that staff have regular breaks and workers at the V&A East Storehouse, which has an air-cooling system, have access to drinking fountains on each floor. Additional heatwave mitigations have also been put in place across the museum network.
The spokesperson said the museum is currently assessing the likely impact of any future labor action on its operations and advised visitors to check the museum’s website for updates.
Union Membership on the Rise
Union ranks are swelling across the U.K. museum sector, and the V&A dispute is only the newest front for a labor movement gaining momentum off the back of years of wage stagnation.
“We’ve seen an explosive surge in membership at the V&A since the ballot opened on July 23,” Marro said.
Parkinson, of Prospect pointed to years of below-inflation funding settlements from the U.K. government’s Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) that have eroded salaries and left staff exposed to the country’s ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
“Employees are being asked to do the same amount of work or even more than before as many of these institutions are investing in big capital projects, which staff are being asked to deliver on less pay,” he said.
The V&A walkouts will follow two days of picket lines this summer at the Royal Museums Greenwich. On August 11 and 12, workers at the National Maritime Museum, Queen’s House, Royal Observatory, and the Cutty Sark—a 19th-century clipper built for the tea trade with China—abandoned their posts as part of an operation coordinated by Prospect.
Like their colleagues at the V&A, workers in Greenwich are calling for their museums to seek London Living Wage accreditation (the London living wage is £14.80, or about $20, an hour, compared to £12.71, or $17, for the basic minimum wage, which employers in the U.K. are legally obliged to pay). They are also asking for paid breaks and better bank holiday pay, a reinstatement of their annual Christmas leave, and a dedicated development budget beyond basic training.
Interviewed on the picket lines on August 12, employees from the National Maritime Museum said that it had become much easier to persuade colleagues to join Prospect in the last 18 months with membership “quadrupling” over that time.
“Inflation’s gone up and wages haven’t followed,” one staffer said. Another point of contention is the way that workers say they are treated by management. “In the past, there’s been zero communication explaining what’s going on at the museum and the challenges they may be facing,” another staffer said. “It’s only since we started the industrial action that we started getting emails from senior management.”
Some managers have been openly hostile to museum workers, some staff members claim, with several workers citing a former human resources director who told them that if they “didn’t like conditions at the museum, they could leave.” Meanwhile, the Royal Museums Greenwich’s director, Paddy Rodgers, is known for walking around the building wearing “massive headphones so no one can approach him,” one staffer said.
A spokesperson for Royal Museums Greenwich said that “internal communications with all staff have been and continue to be extensive” and that the comments about the former H.R. director and museum director Rodgers “are personal and unrelated to the union negotiations.”
With the V&A vote in hand and Greenwich workers already on the picket lines, the pressure across Britain’s museum sector is likely to continue, short of a radical overhaul of how institutions in a chronically underfunded industry operate.