Everybody Out! (ctd.)
August 10 2015
The PCS union is yet again upping the ante at the National Gallery in London. This time, after months of endless, pointless strikes, there is to be an 'all-out strike' later this month. This means the strikes will be more disruptive than the previous planned strikes that happened on scheduled days.
The new strike is in reaction to the National Gallery's signing a contract with Securitas to handle security at the Gallery. The contract is worth £40m over five years. Be in no doubt that this step of widening the outsourcing of the security at the National Gallery is a reflection of the PCS union repeatedly calling pointless but high-profile strikes at the National as part of their own agenda.
A sticking point between the union and the Gallery has been the wages and 'terms and conditions' that might be enjoyed by Gallery staff transferred to a private company. The law dictates that anyone moving from a public sector job to a new private contractor like Secruritas must retain the same benefits, and the Gallery has repeatedly said that:
No members of staff will be made redundant in this process and all affected staff will continue to be paid the London Living Wage. All those staff affected will have the option to move to Securitas with the same terms and conditions and remain a valued part of the National Gallery family.
In response, the Union says:
“They may be the same on day one, but it doesn’t mean they’ll stay the same. If profit margins [for Securitas] are slim the only way for them to increase is to erode staff costs,”
In other words, the Union seeks perpetual terms and conditions forever, which is something no employer can guarantee - not even the state. The union says that if 'profit margins are slim' staff costs must come down, but the same might be said for the Gallery itself - if funding is tight, costs might have to come down. In any case, there are of course other ways to create a more efficient operation than just cutting wages.
And if you believe that security can only be guaranteed by a publicly run company, then have a look at Aerflot's safety record. As the National points out:
Securitas has a proven track record in security and visitor engagement roles within the arts and culture sector. They currently work with the Royal Armouries (Leeds), National Gallery of Denmark, National Gallery – Prague, DDR Museum – Berlin, Art Institute of Chicago, The Jewish Museum – Berlin, Natural History Museum – Berlin, Museum of Modern Art – Lille, and Alhambra Museum – Granada.
Jonathan Jones at the Guardian - no Tory he - has come out in favour of the Gallery. He writes:
[...] the National Gallery dispute looks to me like it just might be a cynical act of muscle flexing by a union that is at least as ideological as it accuses the museum’s trustees of being.
The case for supporting the National Gallery staff has been made powerfully elsewhere in the Guardian. But I have some questions.
First, how is the union’s avowed desire to “defend the functions of a national institution”, in Serwotka’s words, served by closing many of its galleries to visitors for 52 days so far, with worse disruption to come? It’s nonsense to claim the staff are putting the art first if they stop people from seeing it. The visitors being affected are kids in the summer holidays, as well as visitors who come from all over Britain and the world – a lot of ordinary people being denied the chance to see great art.
Perhaps the management of the National Gallery really are savage neoliberal ideologues, but when I meet them they mostly seem to be learned people who love art. It’s hard to believe their greatest ambition is to grind down the workers.
Could it possibly be that the real ideologue here is not Nicholas Penny, the retiring National Gallery director who writes books about Raphael, but Mark Serwotka, the avowedly politicised union leader who speaks alongside Corbyn?
Let’s face it, the National Gallery is a soft target. Its rooms full of old oil paintings strike many on the left as the stuff of posh upper-class art – even though it has a long tradition of being free to everyone. The crass philistinism that sees Renaissance art as toffs’ culture is inclined to side unthinkingly with closing down rooms and rooms of great paintings. If it were Tate Modern, many on the left might look harder at this dispute.
Is the National Gallery really the worst employer, the most extreme provocation, among all the public service contexts in which PCS members work? I can’t help suspecting it is much easier to pick a fight with this gentle temple of the arts than it would be with government departments and the civil services.
I don’t think this is just a struggle for rights. I think it is a chance for Serwotka’s union to throw its weight about. I didn’t think that before the election, but I seriously suspect it now that anti-austerity ideologues in the trade union movement are about to put the Labour party out of power for much of my lifetime and all of my daughter’s youth.
Update - Polly Toynbee, in The Guardian, takes aim at both the National Gallery and the government in defence of the strikers. She says the strike is entirely justified, despite the fact that this new unlimited strike means most of the Gallery will be shut indefinitely. In other words, all hail the 1970s. She also berates the trustees for having nobody on the board with 'staff management' skills - though I suspect most charities would prefer it if staff management was left to the executive, not the trustees.
While Toynbee concedes that the staff now have a pay rise, and are guaranteed the same terms and conditions, she echoes the PCS union's point that Securitas could send members of the Gallery staff elsewhere; ie, to a car park:
Many of them have worked at the gallery for decades, some are artists themselves. But once outsourced to Securitas, they can legally be moved on to anywhere else in the company, as long they get the same conditions. Securitas has contracts guarding ports and aviation, shops and offices, so someone who has for years guarded Van Goghs and guided visitors to rooms filled with Renaissance wonders could now be sent to protect an airport.
Sir Nicholas Penny has tried to reassure staff that this will not happen. And surely it would not be cost effective for Securitas to send well-trained and loyal Gallery staff to a car park; not only would new staff have to be trained in their place, but a former Van Gogh guard is unlikely to have the same skills as a car park attendant. And besides, when have you ever seen a security guard at a car park.
But the Gallery staff are now on indefinite strike because the possibility of being sent to guard a car park might happen, one day. In other words, the entire Gallery will be shut at the height of summer because some staff want to be absolutely sure that they can keep their jobs, under the same pay and conditions, forever. In a modern economy, this is both selfish and unrealistic. And it reinforces the view held by the likes of Jonathan Jones (also of The Guardian) that the dispute at the Gallery is little more than grandstanding by the PCS Union, and their hard core supporters within the Gallery.
