This is the best summary I could come up with:

Hundreds of employees from the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) gathered on the picket line as they began strike action Tuesday.

“We anticipate hopefully that the employer sees our strength and that it starts an internal conversation with them to maybe rethink how they’ve been treating their employees,” said Mark Thornberry, an event setup coordinator who has worked with the museum for 15 years.

OPSEU local president Paul Ayers says public service employees struggled through the COVID-19 pandemic and three years of wage freezes, and cannot afford to keep up with inflation.

In the AGO’s most recent publicly available financial documents, which covers April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023, the gallery reported a deficit of $3.8 million.

Standing at the front of the crowd Tuesday, Meagan Christou, a member of the bargaining team for OPSEU Local 535 and a worker with the AGO for seven years, led a chant of ‘No Wages, No Art.’

Christou says their team is still hoping to bargain and don’t want a strike to last too long, but that there needs to be movement on wages and precarious working conditions.

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