THE Big Pit in Blaenavon will re-open today (Monday) after a strike saw a living history weekend honouring miners scrapped.

The National Coal Museum in Blaenavon planned to stage the fun-packed event with re-enactments, music and discussions but it was cancelled due to a strike over pay.

The industrial action affected several Welsh museums including Big Pit and the National Museum in Cardiff.

Members of the Public and Commercial Services union held a rally outside the National Museum on Saturday in protest at plans to remove premium payments for weekend working.

The payments are said to make up as much as 15 per cent of the take-home pay of front-of-house staff.

Neil Harrison, PCS branch chairman at National Museum Wales, said: "Strike action is always a last resort.

“We have bent over backwards to come to a negotiated settlement of this dispute and management have just not been willing to be flexible.

“We know that the Museum needs to make efficiencies but we do not accept that the poorest-paid staff should bear the greatest burden and the scale of the vote for strike action reflects the strength of feeling over this issue.”

Planned negotiations through the conciliation service ACAS reached an impasse the day before the strike.

National Museum Wales has proposed to increase the basic pay of its lowest paid staff by four per cent during the next financial year, in addition to the four per cent increase those staff members have received since 2011 and also to introduce the Living Wage of £7.85 an hour to mitigate the impact on its staff.

A spokeswoman for National Museums Wales said: “We are very disappointed that PCS has taken the decision to go ahead with industrial action despite us entering into a process of conciliation with them via ACAS, which is ongoing.”

A Big Pit spokeswoman said on Friday the two-day event coinciding with Miners’ Fortnight had been cancelled “for the time being”.