BIG Pit National Coal Museum will be fully closed for four days due to industrial action from staff members belonging to the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union.

The Blaenavon attraction will be shut from Thursday, April 28 to Sunday, May 1 as part of the two year-long dispute over weekend pay allowances with Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales.

On Thursday, PCS union members will be attending a rally in Cardiff following on from the three previous weekends of strikes during April.

“This is a big step, which we’ve not taken lightly, but museum management have upped the ante by refusing even to talk about improving their compensation offer and by bullying staff into signing away their rights to weekend pay,” said PCS Wales secretary Shavanah Taj.

“We have been prepared to negotiate all along and that’s still what we want.”

Ms Taj added that the museum has contacted PCS to discuss weekend working, and that the union’s general secretary, Mark Serwotka, will be attending Thursday’s demonstration.

She said: “They’ve previously refused to discuss this, so this is already a step forward, in response to the pressure that we’ve applied. We now need to see some movement on financial compensation.

“We are demonstrating how serious we are in our demands for a fair settlement – management need to show that they are equally serious about listening to their own staff.”

Premium payments are an allowance paid to eligible museum staff on top of basic salary, for working Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays, which are no longer paid by most other Welsh public bodies or national museums.

“We are extremely disappointed that the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) have broken the agreement they signed up to at ACAS, by not balloting their members on our offer and by undertaking strike action,” said an Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales spokeswoman.

“This announcement of continuous strike action by PCS has come within days of us offering to meet with all of our recognised trade unions to discuss the number of weekends worked by our staff.

“However, our financial position remains the same. The Museum and the Welsh Government have both confirmed to PCS that there is no more money available to improve the offer,” she added.

Across Wales, museums at Drefach and Llanberis will be fully closed for the same period as Big Pit, while St Fagan’s, National Museum Cardiff and Swansea’s National Waterfront Museum will experience partial closures.

Caerleon’s National Roman Legion Museum remains unaffected by the strike action and further information for visitors is available at museumwales.ac.uk