Libraries Cut

by New Worker correspondent

Twenty years ago Hackney library staff were fighting for the reinstatement of overtime payments. Today another libraries battle, involving the same union in the same east London borough is underway to oppose job cuts.
    The Labour council’s plans include cutting 76 jobs which will in part be replaced with 57 new roles which existing staff will have to reapply for. In detail this means there will be just 34 full-time frontline posts, down from 54, to cover seven libraries open between 55 and 64 hours a week. In some cases there could be as little as two staff on duty, even before taking into account of holidays, sick leave, training or any emergency. The cuts will allegedly save £445,000.
    The council claim that the cuts are essential to fund a £4.4 million revamp of Stoke Newington Library which is in the poshest part of an otherwise deprived borough.
    The borough’s local government branch of Unison is in formal dispute, it claims that the council has ample reserves funds (to the tune of £300 million) to fund the renovation and the job cuts will “will have a devastating impact on the service”. It has collected 2,000 signatures on a petition against the proposed job cuts. A large protest meeting was held outside Hackney Town Hall on Wednesday night prior to a meeting of the Council last week. In a consultative ballot, 72 per cent of members said they were ready to strike to prevent the cuts going ahead.
    The union accuses the council of keeping it in the dark about the job cuts when the delayed renovation plans were first announced three years ago.
    Local Unison rep Matt Paul told the Hackney Citizen that: “It will be impossible to deliver and sustain Stoke Newington library without having sufficient staff on the ground … it’s completely pointless if staff cuts are funding this”, and queried: “what’s the point of having a lovely space if it ends up eventually closing by not having the staff to run it?”
    At the same time as these staff cuts the senior management team received an additional £50,000 in salaries. The union is wary of the Mayor’s commitment to keep all libraries open, saying the planned changes could make it unsustainable to run them and result in permanent closures. For instance less staff would make temporary closures more likely in the event of staff shortages.
    Branch chair Brian Debus warned that the cuts “will inevitably mean less ability to advise members of the public and the most vulnerable who most depend on the free services that we
provide.”
    Needless to say Hackney Libraries is not the only public library service. Gerald Vernon-Jackson of the Local Government Association (LGA), which is the trade union for local authorities said that “no council wants to reduce library services, but the dramatic increase in inflation alongside increases to the National Living Wage and higher energy costs has added at least £2.4 billion in extra costs onto the budgets councils set in March this year,”
    At the same time public libraries are seeing an unprecedented rise in the number of people using their services. This is partly due to them returning to one of their Victorian purposes of providing a place for people to keep warm in without going to the pub. Others have established food banks.
    Libraries Connected, which represents public libraries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland reports that many libraries have expanded their services to help people struggling with higher prices - running food banks, giving out clothing donations and extending their opening hours and providing hot drinks.
    The BBC reports that Gainsborough Community Library in Ipswich is selling cut-price bags of fruit and vegetables for £2 and has seen sales nearly double since the summer. Suffolk County Librarian Bruce Leeke, said the cost of running 45 sites has increased a lot, “from our energy costs to our cleaning. We will have to look next year at how we run the service. We are very concerned.”
    Isobel Hunter, the CEO of Libraries Connected, warned that with budgets uncertain many libraries are contemplating cutting staff, services and book-stock with some closures on the horizon. She warns that: “the scale of the savings that libraries need to make and also the impact of inflationary costs means that these aren’t savings that can be found down the back of the sofa or trimming little bits here and there”. Unpopular increases in council tax levels will only provide a temporary relief.
    Further north at Nantwich Library in Cheshire, they have boxes of canned vegetables, fruit and cereals because it serves as an emergency food bank pick-up point.
    Joanne Shannon, of Cheshire East Council said: “I’ve worked in libraries for 38 years and we’ve not seen the numbers of people, the broad cross-section of people who will tell us they are struggling.” She added that: “Some people think of some of the areas in Cheshire as very leafy and affluent, but we do have rural poverty. We’ve got a limited number of resources to give out and they are for extreme cases, but we see so many people who are telling us they are worried. How do we start to prioritise?”
    It is good to see the Tories have abandoned namby-pamby “One Nation Toryism” and gone back to bringing us real Dickensian poverty. While it has brought out the spirit of Victorian charity what is urgently needed is the more revolutionary spirit which produced the Chartist movement and the Communist Manifesto.