Unison members who have just completed 5 days of strike action at the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield have just discovered that there is no government imposed pay cap.
During pay negotiations the museum’s senior managers told UNISON that they were unable to make an improved pay offer as they are subject to a pay cap that is imposed by central government. UNISON members had already rejected the museum’s 4.2% pay offer, which was then increased by 25p per hour. Members decided to go ahead with the strike action as the offer was less than half the current rate of inflation.
In a public statement on the museum’s website, it said that the “sum of the proposal takes us to the maximum allowed within the Government Pay Remit”. After UNISON contacted the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) it has been confirmed that the pay cap does not apply to the museum.
Sam Greenwood, Unison branch secretary said: “We are bitterly disappointed to have been misled about the existence of a pay cap. We asked the museum to contact DCMS to confirm that the pay cap applied to them, but they refused to do so. More than 40 of our members have been on strike for a week based on incorrect information from the museum and the museum has lost income during a busy half term school holiday. We have written to the Board of Trustees expressing our concerns and we hope that a resolution can be achieved so that the further 12 days of strike action that we have planned can be averted. It really is down to the museum to put this right”.
