National Gallery workers on week-long strike

23 April 2015

The PCS members are striking over privatisation. They will walk out this week, having already taken 17 days of industrial action. Another strike is scheduled for May 1.

An invitation to tender the National Gallery’s visitor services is due to be published right before the general election, and before Dr Gabriele Finaldi starts up as the gallery’s new director.

According to a National Gallery spokesperson the move to privatise the service came in response to the PCS’ refusal to accept a move to a roster system which promotes “flexibility”, a byword for worse and more unstable working conditions for employees.

The PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka, said: “It is cynical of the gallery to try to press ahead with this sell-off in the runup to the general election and before the new director has taken over. The process should be halted now and we should be given a proper chance to discuss maintaining services in-house.”

Also on strike this week are PCS members working on IT contracts and pensions administration for the Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

Staff voted overwhelmingly – 80% on a 96% turnout – to take a week of action over low pay, starting on 20 April.

CSC, described by Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee as a “rotten company”, is a billion dollar US multinational. The 200 PCS members working for CSC had been TUPE transferred over from the Ministry of Defence after outsourcing.

Despite the fact CSC turned over $3.2 billion in the last quarter of 2014, declared $1 billion profits for 2014, and paid its CEO an annual salary of $13.37 million, low-paid PCS members have been offered a pay rise of 0.3% for the first 8 months of the pay year and 0.6% for the last 4 months, less than 9 pence an hour.

PCS branch chair Harold Good said: “The employees of CSC take great pride in the work they do, however many are now very angry with the way CSC is behaving. With the constant low pay rises across the company and chipping away at individuals’ terms and conditions it has finally come to the point where the employees, with one voice, have stated: this ends today.

“PCS members are prepared to take a stand for what they are worth, which is a lot more than CSC appear to believe their staff deserve. We hope that CSC will see sense and come back to the table with a much improved offer. But it will have to be something serious and more substantial than the current derisory offer.”