National Museum Wales boss issues job cuts warning

Funding cuts could see the closure of exhibitions and job losses, the director general of National Museum Wales (NMW) has said.

David Anderson spoke to BBC Wales after making an offer to staff involved in a long-running pay dispute over ending "premium payments" to weekend staff.

Strikes by the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union have hit museums.

One union official said the proposals "attacked" the terms and conditions of workers who gave up their own weekends.

Big Pit at Blaenavon in Torfaen is a National Museum Wales attraction

But Mr Anderson said public sector spending cuts had forced a review of NMW's staff costs and he urged workers to accept the museum's "best offer".

"There's only a certain number of options we have and if we don't make the savings on the staff costs then we have to do it in terms of the galleries and the buildings and the sites, or not having any new exhibitions, or closing down our education services," he added.

"Those are the things we spend the money on, so those are our choices. We wouldn't be doing our job if we didn't preserve our services as well as preserving staff."

Staff protested outside Swansea's National Waterfront Museum in August

NMW runs seven sites; National Museum Cardiff, St Fagans National History Museum, National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, Big Pit in Blaenavon, Torfaen, National Roman Legion Museum in Newport, the National Wool Museum in Llandysul, Carmarthenshire, and the Welsh Slate Museum in Llanberis, Gwynedd.

PCS is conducting an indicative ballot to assess whether its members will accept the latest proposal.

The result will be known by 2 October and it will then decide whether to hold a full vote on the issue.

Neil Harrison, the PCS union's branch chairman at National Museum Wales, said he did not believe "affordability" was a factor in the proposed changes to staff payments.

"What lies at the heart of this is an attempt by management to remove weekend payments," he said.

"It's an attack on the terms and conditions of those people who have to give up their weekends so that other people can come with their families to enjoy the national museums."

Dozens of strikes have forced the museum's sites across Wales to close at various times during the course of the dispute since 2014.

'Austerity storm'

Mr Anderson said he had returned £30,000 of bonuses he had been eligible for in recent years and staff on higher pay grades had been subject to a pay freeze.

The museum said its latest offer to workers involved in the dispute includes a 6% increase in basic pay, plus a further two years' worth of premium payments equivalent to an average payout of £3,600.

It will also guarantee the lowest paid staff will not "lose out" through the process.

A spokesman said: "We feel that in the present economic circumstances where, like everybody else in the public sector in the UK, we've had a loss in real terms of about 25% of our budget in the last few years.

"This is a very fair offer that we're making in the middle of an austerity storm."