Pay up, museums – or pay the price

When the Museums Association (MA) published its updated salary guidelines last month, it was against the backdrop of a series of strikes over pay at museums across the country.

MA director Mark Taylor's introduction to the guidelines says that although some slow progress is being made, museum salaries are still
too low.

This is reflected in recent research by the MA which showed there had been an increase in museums advertising collections and learning posts with a starting salary above the recommended minimum, but that most were still advertising posts with salary levels below the recommended level.

Some small comfort may be taken from the research, which shows that museums are less frequently specifying a postgraduate degree as a requirement for posts.

Research by the Museum Professionals Group last autumn found that 56 per cent of the 81 respondents were in posts with management responsibility, but only 4 per cent earned more that £34,000 a year, which doesn't compare well with similar sectors.

But is hard to pin down where responsibility lies. Is it with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Treasury, local authorities, trustees, directors, senior managers.

Or is it simply the result of an oversupply of qualified candidates? As one museum professional said: "It is a classic pass-the-buck situation, with everyone blaming each other for the problem of low pay."

At a national level, the Treasury's commitment to capping public sector wage increases at 2 per cent has made rises in real terms an unlikely prospect, even where the museum management is willing.

When the Museum of London moved to increase pay earlier this year, the Treasury stepped in to prevent it from doing so, leading to a strike last month by staff.

At a local level, authorities have their own rules. Alec Coles, co convenor of the Group for Large Local Authority Museums, said local authorities were aware of the MA's guidelines, but limited as to what they could do with them. He said the fragmented nature of the sector made it hard to come up with a unified policy to which everyone could sign up.

Independent museums, although largely free of government bureaucracy, have problems of their own. Bill Ferris, chairman of the Association of Independent Museums, said the salary guidelines were a useful benchmark, but ultimately, the business plan must rule.

Rebecca Jacobs, the MA's museum development officer and author of the guidelines, stressed that if museums did not value staff and pay them an appropriate wage, then they will not be able to give the same quality of service. In other words, staff will feel undervalued and leave.

Alan Leighton, the national secretary for trade union Prospect, said this was happening already, describing unprecedented anger over what amounted to pay cuts in real terms and delays in pay rises. He added that the pay system was "broken" and that union members had had enough.

This has been made clear in strikes over the past few months at the National Museum of Science and Industry group, the Museum of London, the National Coal Mining Museum for England and seven national museums in Wales, as well as in strike ballots at the British Museum and the National Gallery.

But some museums are using the salary guidelines. According to the MA, they are the most downloaded document on its website, at a rate of more than 400 times a month. The issue of pay isn't going to go away, but museums may have to work harder to make themselves heard, if they are to tackle the issue successfully.