EFE Madrid

Madrid

Updated Friday, February 16, 2024-21:29

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A total of 19 cultural mediation workers at the

Reina Sofía Museum

- staff who carry out the commented visits for the general public - have received this Friday notification of a

collective dismissal as of March 1

by the service subcontractor company,

Sedena SL.

In a statement sent to the media, the

SUT Union

explains that this notification has reached the workers less than 15 days after the end of the contract, after several weeks without news from the institution.

Sources from the Reina Sofía have acknowledged to EFE that there was a

failure in the drafting of the specifications

for a new bidding competition for which

the head of the Education Area, María Acaso López Bosch, has been dismissed.

Once this error was detected, they asked Sedena to apply an ERTE, so that the workers could be hired again once the contest was held again. But this company has decided to dismiss 19 workers irreversibly, through an ERE. Thus, in a new contract,

current workers lose the right to subrogation

or to be hired again.

The aforementioned sources insist that they did everything in their power to resolve the situation of these workers, since they are the first interested in having experienced personnel in these tasks.

However, they emphasize that guided tours and programs, especially those dedicated to children, young people, seniors and accessibility,

will continue to be carried out

by Museum staff.

They therefore deny that, as this company union denounces, the cultural mediation service is going to disappear, since there are other workers, some on staff, who carry it out.

Collective dismissal

Today, the service subcontractor company has announced the start of a consultation period for the collective dismissal of the cultural mediation staff, a team in charge of carrying out part of the commented visits to the Museum's permanent collection for the general public who come to visit it. . It is, they say, a structural service of the Museum since 2011.

Among the tours carried out are 'Move Guernica', 'We Visit the Collection Together', 'Never at Rest', 'Getting Out of the Margin' and 'Micro Visit of Introduction to the Collection'.

In the opinion of the union "the only solution from the Management has been the timely dismissal of the head of the Education Area of ​​the Reina Sofía Museum, María Acaso López Bosch, as directly responsible for the situation,

trying to establish a "firewall"

.

According to what they say, the problem stems from the fact that the current financing of the Museum's Cultural Mediation project is carried out with the so-called PERTE funds (Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan), and this financing cannot be extended. A statement denied by the Museum, which emphasizes that the payment for this type of services is produced with structural funds from the art gallery.

"The MNCARS and its Management

strive to project to the outside an image that does not correspond

either in form or content with the reality and labor treatment it maintains towards its workers," they lament.

And they assure that "we are facing a

clear scenario of institutional hypocrisy

whereby, on the one hand, exhibitions, conferences, cycles and declarations are made against the job insecurity of the sector while in real events the staff is kept subcontracted and without any guarantee of stable employment, when a collective dismissal is not resorted to, as is the case."