This week, National Gallery workers undertook an all-out strike action. Having already struck for 17 days, members are battling to halt the privatisation of 400 staff roles at the London museum and reinstate victimised trade unionist Candy Udwin.

Following a familiar pattern, the contract to run the gallery is due to go to tender only two days before the general election.

Strikers have employed fresh tactics to engage high-profile support.

There are also signs of growing sympathy both within and outside the movement and, perhaps, a whiff of Grunwick.

Here in Cardiff, management at the National Museum Wales have responded to budget cuts by reducing the pay of hard-pressed staff.

Standing proudly in the tradition of solidarity, local artists from Cardiff People’s Assembly are coming together with trade union members to organise a fundraising sale at the Cathays Sports and Social Club.

It might yet prove to be a twee affair. I have already arranged to bag a violin from an NEC member and will, as a part of my own contribution, provide a pungent Moroccan handbag as well as several ancient copies of the Strike Gazette.

However, as much as I am looking forward to this kitsch picket-carnival, my mind will be focused on a fire-sale of an altogether different magnitude.

Austerity has become the catalyst for an unprecedented transfer of wealth. Public Service Industries (PSI) provide the vehicle for this transfer — multinational profiteers who specialise in nothing other than winning contracts, increasing wealth and income inequality as well as driving low pay and poverty.

Make no mistake — this is a co-ordinated assault. The Public Services Strategy Board (PSSB) includes 18 senior executives of the largest outsourcing companies including G4S, Serco, Autos and Capita. As the financial crisis unfolded in 2009-10 the PSSB resumed its campaign to capture a greater share of public spending.

In 2012 Confederation of British Industry director-general John Cridland trumpeted: “Public spending discipline sets out a compelling case for the government to go further and faster in opening up public services markets.”

Government, he insisted, will have “to metamorphose from a direct provider to a market manager.”

As if to seal the deal, in 2014, Francis Maude smugly announced: “Let no-one have any doubt — public services are too important to too many people to be allowed to be the monopoly of the public sector.”

Today, approximately £120 billion, or roughly £1 in every £3 that government spends on public services, goes to independent providers — a transfer of assets that massively contributes to the centralisation of private wealth and political influence.

To describe this as “lobbying” is wholly inadequate. The PSI industry has successfully sought to stretch the content of economic capture beyond the simple phrase of privatisation, effecting revolutionary structural changes in the institutions of the British state.

This “revolution” specifically involves the promotion of managerial values, market tests, a tolerance of inequality, a rejection of public solutions and pursuit of “a smaller state.”

Austerity provides the perfect environment for its implementation. Led by the diminution of terms and conditions, collective bargaining mechanisms are not carried over by Tupe regulations.

Estimates suggest that in excess of 6,000 local agreements are dissolved each year — all of which contributes to the race towards a low-wage, sweatshop economy.

One commentator explained how share values rise radically upon the award of a public-sector contract — all in the expectation of super profits gained directly at the expense of the existing workforce: “They (PSI contractors) are like vampires and will attach their jaws whenever they can find a guaranteed income stream.”

Similarly, austerity is good for profiteers. Providers do not have to sell to the ultimate user and given the increasingly long life of most contracts, the point at which the “market” enters is rare.

High-profile failures such as Southern Cross and Rochdale, which became a cheap dumping ground for vulnerable young people, indicates something of the human cost.

Starved of central funding, many local authorities now feel forced to consider outsourcing as the only possible option.

One council leader confided that the logic towards becoming a “commissioning council” is “largely irresistible.”

Acknowledging that officers were not equipped with the skills and experience necessary to accurately assess the price of assets and services — the recent collapse of Bristol Council’s Biffa contract cost around £2 million.

As with the banking sector, many PSI contracts are adjudged as “too big to fail.” Against the backdrop of vogue localism and super-councils, it is not difficult to foresee the absolute feeding frenzy that must follow. And what will this mean for Manchester’s NHS?

Polling reveals that in excess of 80 per cent of voters oppose further privatisation. However, as yet this discontent remains politically latent and is not being voiced by any of the main parties before the imminent general election.

Instead, we are confronted by a silent revolution — enabled in the rarified environment of ministerial consultations where only PWC and the interests of capital find purchase.

Austerity is both a vehicle and apology for enrichment secured at the point of catastrophe. It posits a single solution — the enrichment of the profiteer secured under catastrophic conditions.

However, the fact remains that where we begin to organise, a movement can explode to threaten the elite consensus underpinning a fire-sale whereby our world is auctioned beneath our feet.

It is my sincere hope that this strike will win and that their struggle will be the first of many. The alternative might very well be that one day we wake to imagine, but find that there is nothing.

• To find out more about the National Gallery strike, join the official facebook group https://www.facebook.com/nonationalgalleryprivatisation Donations to the strike fund are gratefully welcomed or why not arrange your own solidarity fire-sale?