Hundreds of positions cut at Tate and National Gallery on the eve of reopening

The commercial subsidiaries of the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery will lay off hundreds of employees this summer, while the two British institutions are very fragile. More than 200 jobs could be lost within Tate Enterprises, a commercial subsidiary dedicated to the sales, catering and publishing activities of all four Tate museums located in London, Liverpool and Saint Ives.

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Tate Enterprises plans to save a million pounds. The employees likely to be affected by this redundancy plan are sales staff, employed part-time or on a fixed-term basis. In a press release, Hamish Anderson and Carmel Allen, directors of Tate Enterprises, said that this restructuring took place against a background of " inevitable collapse in the number of visitors  ". The teams working in the Tate museums themselves are not affected.

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Employees of Tate Enterprises told The Art Newspaper their anger at this difference in treatment between the institution, public, and its commercial subsidiary, private. " The museums themselves do not fire, which gives the impression that they perceive us - we who work in shops and cafes, and who are among the lowest paid - as an ancillary workforce, of second zone ”, according to an employee.

A planned strike

The unions are now working to convince Tate, owner of Tate Enterprises, to stop the job cuts. They insist that the group has benefited from an aid plan from the British government for cultural institutions, the amount of which amounts to £ 100 million. To protest the layoffs, Tate workers plan to strike the museums, which are slated to reopen at the end of July.

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As for the National Gallery, it plans budget cuts within its subsidiary in charge of shops, cafes, restaurants, publications and events. Among its 88 employees, 24 will be laid off. The personnel concerned occupy positions whose " activity will considerably decrease  ". Again, within the London museum itself, no layoffs are planned.