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The Tate Modern Launch Their Highly Anticipated Extension The Switch House
Tate wanted to hire 20 people to staff the new Switch building, but many agency staff already doing the job failed to get an interview. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Tate wanted to hire 20 people to staff the new Switch building, but many agency staff already doing the job failed to get an interview. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

I was made to feel not good enough to interview for my own job at the Tate

This article is more than 7 years old
Anonymous

Some agency staff have worked at the museum for 16 years. We knew it was a zero-hours contract but had hoped our loyalty would be recognised

Working as a visitor experience assistant for Tate – in one of Britain’s most famous art galleries – is not a bad job. My colleagues and I are surrounded by incredible works of art and we work for a prestigious organisation. First and foremost, we are there for you, the visitor: to guide, inform, and assist where and when we can, knowing when to offer our expertise and when to let you explore freely.

However, there are two strata of staff performing the same role – those employed by Tate itself, and agency staff. It is important to understand that there isn’t a high turnover of staff; the large group of agency employees have been with Tate from anything between four years all the way up to 16 years. Many of us are highly educated, with excellent customer service skills, and we take our positions at Tate seriously.

But for many of those years we were paid considerably less than our Tate counterparts. Paid less to do the same job, expected to do unsociable hours, late evenings and events … all with no sick pay or guaranteed holiday. We didn’t know from one week to the next what hours we would get, and whether we’d earn enough to pay the rent. With budget cuts to make, if money can be saved then it is often at our expense.

We all went into this job knowing that it was a zero-hours contract, but we gave our loyalty, time, and skills to Tate and hoped that this would be acknowledged. Recently we gained equal pay to Tate’s lowest pay band – although this was not easily achieved. Alongside the union PCS we fought hard for fair pay, and eventually, around April 2015, an agreement was reached between the contractor at the time, Wilson James, and Tate.

But the ongoing differences between the treatment of Tate employees and agency staff have left many of us feeling undervalued. This was never felt more acutely than during Tate’s recent recruitment campaign, in which it hoped to fill roughly 20 new full-time visitor assistant roles just in time for the opening of the new building – the first large-scale hiring in about eight years. To those of us on zero-hours contracts who wished for more stability and guaranteed hours, this seemed like the perfect opportunity, especially as we already did the role being advertised.

We hoped the Tate might offer the roles to staff already working in the gallery on zero-hours contracts. Tate is, after all, a charity, so reducing the cost of training new staff from scratch would surely be worth consideration. Even if the job had to be advertised externally, perhaps existing employees could be offered interviews or a separate application, on the understanding that we already perform the role. Instead, we were subjected to the same basic psychometric testing as the rest of the 600+ applicants. Many of us who applied were not given an interview because we failed this initial test, which is slightly perturbing. If applicants who already do the job you’re recruiting for can’t pass the application process, something has gone awry.

Keep in mind that these are good solid employees, who have worked for years with Tate, giving their all to the role and knowing it inside and out. Working tirelessly in the lead up to the grand opening of the Switch building, we were made to feel as though we weren’t good enough to interview for our own jobs. We are expected to work the shifts no one else wants, but we’re the last to be considered for training. There has been no apology, no understanding or empathy for our situation, simply a complete disregard for how demotivating this process has been.

While Tate are far from the worse company around, agency staff are treated as both cheap and expendable. We are constantly told about opportunities for development we aren’t entitled to, that the “real” Tate staff should apply for, then asked to work an event overnight with no extra pay, as we aren’t entitled to overtime.

Why not move on? We have asked ourselves these questions, of course – but why should we not stay and fight to change things? It is only by trying to have our voices heard that change might occur. Then we can at least say we tried to fight for fairness and equality in our workplace.

This series aims to give a voice to the staff behind the public services that are hit by mounting cuts and rising demand, and so often denigrated by the press, politicians and public. If you would like to write an article for the series, contact tamsin.rutter@theguardian.com.

Talk to us on Twitter via @Guardianpublic and sign up for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday.

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