Employees at Tate galleries throughout the nation live in in-work poverty and experiencing anxiousness concerning the way forward for their positions, a Public and Business Providers union (PCS) supply has informed The Artwork Newspaper.
The feedback comply with yesterday’s announcement that greater than 150 Tate employees will stroll out later this month in a dispute over pay and phrases and situations. Motion is about to happen from 26 November to 2 December, with PCS members demanding an above-inflation pay award and the return of workers advantages, together with a workers canteen and subsidised meals.
The supply stated: “In a [PCS] survey of members in July 2025… employees complained about low morale, rising workload and the lack of coaching alternatives on the Tate… members highlighted experiencing a variety of psychological and bodily well being points, anxieties about their future on the Tate and lack of disposable earnings.”
Employees at Tate Britain, Tate Trendy, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives have been provided a wage enhance of between 2% and three% by the gallery. Nonetheless, amid the price of dwelling disaster and what PCS has described as “endemic low pay” the supply has been rejected.
A Tate spokesperson stated: “Tate has made cautious financial savings this yr in an effort to put money into workers pay and nonetheless obtain a balanced price range. This features a 3% wage enhance for many roles—together with all staff on the bottom three pay bands—whereas administrators are taking a 0% enhance to assist stability the general prices.
“Two of the three unions at Tate have accepted this supply. It is just by creating and sustaining a sustainable monetary mannequin that we are able to proceed to put money into our workers in the long run.”
The union cites redundancies and elevated workloads following a latest restructure—which noticed 40 roles minimize to deal with a funding deficit—as causes of decreased workers morale. The supply stated the restructure, which is the organisation’s second throughout the final 5 years, ought to “increase severe alarm bells about how Tate’s senior management is working the organisation”.
Testimonies from PCS’s 2025 member survey members shared with The Artwork Newspaper give a way of the scenario confronted by some Tate workers. “Even with working time beyond regulation, it’s a wrestle to feed myself till the top of the month if I pay all my payments,” one member stated. One other said: “It’s got me in additional debt and has made my psychological well being worse with all the fear about whether or not I can afford to get by this month.”
The motion is anticipated to trigger some disruption at Tate galleries, together with at Tate Britain, the place the exhibition Turner and Constable: Rivals and Originals is because of open the day after strikes start. A Tate spokesperson stated the gallery shall be working to make sure the exhibition stays to the general public on daily basis as common.
The PCS supply stated: “We empathise with art-lovers who could also be impacted by PCS’ strike motion… Our members have taken the troublesome resolution to strike as a result of they’re going through in-work poverty, eroded phrases and situations, and spiralling workloads following repeated restructures and below-inflation pay award.
“This strike motion shouldn’t be about curbing folks’s entry to artwork, it’s about guaranteeing the individuals who make these cultural experiences attainable can afford to dwell.”
In line with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Improvement, in-work poverty happens when a working individual’s earnings, after housing prices, is lower than 60% of the nationwide common, and so they don’t earn sufficient to satisfy the price of dwelling. A latest report from the Institute for Fiscal Research put the UK’s in-work poverty charge for 2023-24 at 18.0%.
