After over 60 days of strike action at the National Coal Mining Museum, Wakefield Socialist Party held a public meeting to discuss how further solidarity could be built with the striking Unison members.
We were joined by Unison branch secretary Sam and striking worker Alan. They explained how management at the museum had withdrawn a pay proposal which the union had been prepared to recommend to the workforce, and since then made two more lesser offers.
Management has spent many times more than the cost of settling the dispute (an estimated £8,000 gap) on security guards and other measures to try to break the strike. Injunctions have been threatened to stop picketing.
Alan and Sam were part of a delegation that recently visited ‘The Big Pit’ in Wales, a similar museum run by the Welsh government. PCS members who work there are paid much better for similar work.
The strikers have launched a petition demanding the resignation of the senior managers and trustees of the museum, given their strikebreaking conduct. One trustee has resigned in the last few weeks.
With the vast bulk of the museum’s funding coming from central government, this poses the question of what would come next if the trustees resign. The meeting discussed what Socialist Party members had put forward in our previous article, of Wakefield council taking over the museum and demanding full funding from the government. How there could be democratic control by the workforce in running the museum was discussed.
National demonstration in support of National Coal Mining Museum strikers: Saturday 6 December, assemble 12.30pm outside Wakefield Cathedral
