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THE DISPUTE over staff cuts at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington
continues to escalate. Staff and management held rival gatherings last Friday.
The museum’s staff invited other scientists and the press to a meeting to
hear their case against the planned cuts of 100 jobs. Fifty of them are
researchers, in the staff of 820.

Senior scientists at the museum were told that they faced disciplinary
action if they organised meetings to oppose the planned cuts. One researcher,
who is due to retire within the next two years, claims that he was threatened
with the loss of his pension as well as his job.

Relations between the staff and management have declined steadily since
the museum published its new corporate plan in April (This Week, 28 April).
This calls for staff cuts and a complete reorganisation of the museum’s
research programme. Staff claim that they were told about the redundancies
on the same day that they received the corporate plan.

The management maintains that the cuts are essential if the museum is
to avoid a financial crisis. Staff believe that the museum should convince
the government that it needs more money to maintain Britain’s premier position
in taxonomic and other research. (See ‘Will taxonomy go the way of the dinosaurs?’,
this issue.) At both meetings it became clear that researchers outside the
museum also fear for the quality of the museum’s scientific programme. They
are particularly worried about the museum’s collection of 67 million specimens.

David Attenborough, a renowned naturalist, attended both meetings. He
attributes part of the blame for the recent decline in the budget of the
museum to the Office of Arts and Libraries, which oversees Britain’s museums
and art galleries. The museum was moved from the control of the Department
of Education and Science to the OAL in 1987.

Attenborough says that the cutbacks come at a time when the museum’s
work was more important than ever. He believes that the OAL lacks the scientific
expertise needed to judge the museum’s research programme. ‘Is there no
chance of additional funding from the Department of Education and Science?
This is a matter of such importance that it would receive huge popular support.’