More than 200 specialist staff at the UK’s national science museum have voted to take strike action over a pay dispute.
Members of the Prospect union including museum curators, conservators, technical staff and managers are angry that they have still not received a pay offer due in April 2007.
Members at four sites, including the Science Museum in London, National Railway Museum in York, National Media Museum in Bradford and the Science Museum in Swindon, voted for a series of one-day walkouts.
Plans for industrial action have been put on hold pending a final negotiating meeting with management next Tuesday.
Staff are also very concerned at plans to terminate the museum’s current status as a Non-Departmental Public Body with ties to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Treasury.
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Emily Boase, Prospect negotiations officer, said the result was a massive vote of no confidence by specialist staff in the director’s plans. “Members have had to endure an effective pay freeze for 10 months. The failure to even make an offer for 2007 pay is incompetence of the highest order.
“We are giving the museum a last chance to save the public from a totally unnecessary dispute,” Boase said.
