Steve Ion, Merseyside Socialist Party
Over 200 PCS members, working in seven different Liverpool museums, delivered an overwhelming 94% ‘yes’ vote for strike action.
They are on strike because their management has refused to pay the £1,500 cost-of-living payment which was accepted by the national PCS leadership in settlement of the national pay strike last year. National Museums Liverpool (NML) is one department that has still not paid it.
Liverpool museum members are among the lowest paid. They remain passionate about their work and the culture of the city. They are an invaluable source of information to visitors.
Culture remains underfunded and either the government Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) needs to pay over the extra money or the Liverpool Museum management does. We were told by strikers that, to settle the dispute, it is estimated they would need £750,000.
Management has allocated funding to new projects, yet argue that they have still not got enough money for wages. The effect on morale is clear, as workers feel undervalued.
As well as daily lively picket lines, a well-attended strike rally was held, which heard the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress agree to set up an online financial appeal for the strikers.
We were told that David Henshaw, chair of NML, is also chair of the Wirral University Teaching Hospital Foundation. Low-paid clinical support workers there, underpaid by nearly £2,000 a year, are also in dispute.
The dispute runs till 14 April. Please send messages of support to [email protected]
- PCS Broad Left Network (BLN) and Socialist Party member Marion Lloyd is seeking nomination for PCS president, alongside a full list of activists from the across the union standing for the National Executive Committee, who have come together to put forward a fighting alternative to the current PCS leadership. The BLN opposed accepting the one-off £1,500 payment last year, believing that with a serious national campaign, more could have been won. The BLN gives full support to the Liverpool strikers.
