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Title: Sheffield Library Workers’ Strike
Author: Anarchist Federation
Date: 1995
Language: en
Topics: strike, United Kingdom, Organise!, the Labour Party
Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130513072509/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue40/sheffield_library_workers_strike.html
Notes: Published in Organise! Issue 40: Special Issue on Work — Autumn 1995.

Anarchist Federation

Sheffield Library Workers’ Strike

350 LIBRARY WORKERS went out on strike on 5 June for 8 weeks against

their employer, the supposedly ‘radical’ City Council. Most of those

involved were low-paid women workers. The Labour Council had threatened

to cut higher rates of pay for weekend work, in effect cutting pay by

7%- £60 a month. An average full-time worker earns about £10,000 a year

and as most of the workers are on part-time contracts, this would have

meant a drastic pay cut.

This was followed by proposals to close 6 libraries which would result

in redundancies. This second move clinched the walk-out. The closures

would have meant that there would have been only 27 libraries open in a

city with a population of 500,000. It should be noted that this was part

of a package of budget cuts — cuts in services- planned by the Labour

council of £4.5 million.

The strike was firmly under control of the union UNISON-more of this

later- and as such was an official strike with a 4–1 vote in favour of

strike action. During the strike the only library open was the

Hillsborough site, where pregnant staff ( who risked loss of maternity

pay if they had come out) kept open the office of Labour MP Helen

Jackson, housed on the site.

The Labour council had already shown how they had meant to go on, when

they had evicted workers from the public gallery at a council meeting to

okay the cuts.

UNISON made an all-out effort to limit the strike purely to pay, to

isolate the strike from other council workers, and workers in general in

Sheffield. They refused to call for solidarity action from other council

workers. The unions represented amongst Sheffield council’s workforce,

including UNISON, had agreed to a 3.25 % cut in pay in 1993. This, they

argued, was horse-traded in return for the maintenance of 1,400 jobs.

Surprise! Surprise! Cuts have continued, with school closures, the end

of kitchen facilities in some schools, cuts in the budget of the Health

Authority, and a pay freeze.

The action of local Labour councillors and MPs was to be expected. Helen

Jackson organised a provocation at Hillsborough Library when she called

for an open day “for families”, inviting pensioners and children. She

then launched into an attack, reported in the press, where she said that

balloons had been burst by pickets, strikers’ children had eaten the

sandwiches for the invited children, and the strikers in general were

intimidating. For his part David Blunkett insisted that the strike be

ended, whilst various councillors wrote to the local paper, the

Sheffield Star, continuing the intimidation allegations.

The strike was ended when the Council agreed to withdraw the pay-cuts.

This was partly due to the threat of 80 workers from the leisure

department coming out on strike. The council was particularly sensitive

about the idea of six leisure centres being shut down as it has actively

pushed Sheffield as the “UK city of sport” and the venue for the World

Student Games. The strength of the strike, which closed all but one

library in one of the largest public library services in Britain was

also a deterring factor.

UNISON went out to make sure that the strike was only about pay cuts and

not about the closures and that other workers did not strike. UNISON

general secretary Rodney Bickerstaffe and TUC general secretary John

Monks were mobilised to come to Sheffield.

At the local level it was the leftists in the UNISON branch who

furthered the role of the union bureaucrats. The Socialist Workers Party

has 2 members in leading positions. They welcomed the support of

Bickerstaffe and Monks. They furthered the illusions in Labourism by

criticising the Council only because it was “spineless” in kow-towing to

national Tory plans. They of course failed to explain the role of the

Council as the local State, the link in the chain of command that

delivers austerity packages, and everything else the international

capital, the national state and the capitalists intend to inflict on us.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats in their role in the local State, the

Councils, are as much implicated in this as the Conservatives. These

frantic efforts to defend Labour were repeated when one of these SWP

members condemned Helen Jackson for her action by saying: “We would

expect a Labour MP to be on the side of working people...” As we have

repeatedly pointed out the SWP is an external faction of Labourism, and

is deeply entangled in electoral support for it, and in keeping alive

the decaying trade unions.

In fact the strike was dominated by the bureaucrats, including the local

ones (the SWP). For Socialist Worker the strike was a model for “rank

and file involvement” because there were 2 strike meetings a week. At

the daily strike committee meetings, workers were allowed to attend, but

not to decide on how the strike went forward.

Keith Crawshaw, Sheffield’s library boss, may well try to question the

time and a half payment again, and to put pressure on staff to “work

weekends as part of a regular shift” without paying extra. He tried to

justify the Council actions by claiming that library workers in Hereford

and Worcester had accepted weekend work without overtime pay without

striking. 2 weeks later, on 15 August libraries, social services and

admin staff in Hereford and Worcester struck for a day and then again in

September and October.