Workers at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) will strike across all four of the institution’s London sites on October 29 and 30 in an escalating dispute over poverty wages and increasingly intolerable working conditions.
The action, involving union members at South Kensington, V&A East Museum, V&A East Storehouse in Stratford and the Young V&A in Bethnal Green, marks the first time the museum’s entire London network will be hit simultaneously by industrial action. It follows a series of September strikes that exposed a growing rebellion among workers at one of Britain’s premier cultural institutions.
Behind the V&A’s carefully cultivated image as a world-class museum lies a workplace regime that workers have compared to an Amazon fulfilment centre. The dispute first erupted at the newly opened V&A East Storehouse, where staff reported being denied sufficient time for drinking water and toilet breaks during shifts.
That workers had to organise strike action to secure what should be the most basic workplace rights is a damning indictment of the conditions imposed in Britain’s cultural sector. Every Storehouse worker who voted in the ballot supported industrial action, with turnout approaching 88 per cent, reflecting deep-rooted anger over management practices.
Only after the threat of strikes did management partially retreat, agreeing in August to provide two paid breaks per day. Yet this concession addressed only the most visible symptom of a much broader crisis confronting museum workers.
Across the V&A estate, employees have reported staff shortages, excessive workloads and years of declining living standards. PCS members voted 95.39 per cent for strike action with an 87.04 per cent turnout, showing overwhelming support for a fight against management’s offensive. Workers have described severe workplace overheating, dehydration, and even colleagues fainting on journeys home after shifts.
The scale of opposition became clear in September, when about 700 workers, more than half the V&A’s workforce, took part in strike action that forced the closure of several sites.
The workforce’s demands are modest. PCS and Prospect members are seeking a 4 per cent pay increase and an uplift that would bring the lowest-paid workers to £14.80 per hour, making the V&A an accredited Real London Living Wage employer.
Management has portrayed these demands as unaffordable. Yet PCS estimates the difference between its pay claim and management’s existing offer would be roughly £500,000 annually, a negligible sum for a national institution.
Workers have every reason to reject museum management’s claims of poverty. The V&A holds around £72 million in reserves while continuing to invest heavily in major capital projects. As workers have pointed out, funding always seems available for new buildings, refurbishments, and expansion projects, while employees responsible for keeping the institution running are told they must accept further declines in their living standards.
The current dispute unfolds against the backdrop of years of attacks on museum workers. Hundreds of jobs were lost during restructuring carried out throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Real wages have since been eroded by below-inflation pay settlements, with workers absorbing substantial losses in purchasing power during recent years of inflation.
One worker speaking to Museums Journal summed up the widespread mood: “We’ve finally reached breaking point.”
Management has responded by preparing a fresh round of cuts. Last month, the V&A announced a voluntary exit scheme covering all sites, fuelling fears that the institution is preparing further workforce reductions. Such schemes invariably increase workloads for those who remain while undermining public service delivery.
Responsibility for these attacks ultimately lies not only with museum management but with the Labour government. The V&A itself has acknowledged that government funding settlements amount to real-terms reductions once inflation is taken into account. Across the museum and heritage sector, institutions are being compelled to operate under permanent austerity conditions. The result is a familiar pattern: workers are expected to bear the burden through worsening conditions, suppressed wages and job cuts. At the same time, management pursues financial targets dictated by government spending priorities.
Far from representing an isolated dispute, the struggle at the V&A is part of a broader movement among museum and heritage workers. At Royal Museums Greenwich, workers have balloted for industrial action over pay and Living Wage accreditation. The Royal Armouries is pursuing plans to reduce labour costs. Across the sector, management is advancing virtually identical programmes under the banner of “financial sustainability”, while workers face deteriorating conditions and declining real incomes.
The role of V&A Director Tristram Hunt, a former Labour MP, is politically significant. Hunt’s reported refusal to participate in negotiations shows how little management values the workforce. But the issue is not simply one individual’s attitude. Hunt embodies a wider layer of Labour politicians, public-sector executives and cultural administrators tasked with implementing austerity while presenting cuts as responsible management.
The trade union apparatus’s conduct throughout the dispute raises important questions.
PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote has correctly described it as a scandal that a leading national museum fails to pay all staff a genuine living wage. Yet union leadership has limited workers to a series of isolated, carefully managed stoppages while directing appeals to Labour politicians who are themselves enforcing spending cuts.
No serious effort has been made to unify the developing disputes across museums, galleries, libraries and cultural institutions throughout Britain. Workers face the same employers’ offensive everywhere: understaffing, declining pay, intensified labour, and threats to jobs. Yet struggles remain fragmented, institution by institution.
Workers have already demonstrated their collective strength through strikes, overtime bans, work-to-rule measures and other forms of industrial action. These actions show that museums cannot function without the labour of the workers who maintain collections, assist visitors, provide security, manage archives, and run daily operations.
The decisive question is how to organise and direct that power. V&A workers need new organisations of struggle, rank-and-file committees independent of the union bureaucracy, to transfer decision-making power directly into the hands of workers themselves. Such committees could unite workers across all V&A sites, establish direct links with staff at other museums and cultural institutions, and coordinate a common fight against pay cuts, redundancies and deteriorating working conditions.
They should appeal for support not only among museum workers but also among Amazon warehouse workers, postal workers, civil servants, transport workers, educators, and health workers facing the same attacks amid deepening austerity.
The struggle at the V&A raises fundamental questions about society’s priorities. Vast resources fund prestige projects, corporate subsidies, and military expenditure, while workers responsible for preserving humanity’s artistic and historical heritage are told there is no money for decent wages or humane working conditions.
The treasures housed within the V&A were created through generations of labour. The workers who safeguard and maintain those collections today have every right to insist on secure employment, decent pay, and dignified working conditions. Their struggle deserves the support of workers throughout Britain and internationally.
