8:20am Friday 19th March 2010
By David Paine
STAFF who work in Worcestershire’s libraries on a temporary basis are at risk of losing their jobs.
The county council, which is nearing the end of a review of the library service, said the 23.5 full-time equivalent posts it is looking to get rid of will not result in any compulsory redundancies and is much fewer than the 50 it planned to axe at the beginning of the process.
Adrian Gregson, Worcestershire’s branch secretary for public sector union Unison, said: “Just because there will be no redundancies by their definition, it doesn’t mean there won’t be some pain.”
Opposition Labour county councillor Richard Udall said: “I don’t believe the county council can make such cuts without it having a serious effect on the overall quality of service to library users or on existing opening hours.”
However, Conservative county councillor Philip Gretton, cabinet member for adult and community services, said opening hours would increase.
In a statement Coun Gretton said a review into the library service had been ongoing since 2008 and it had resulted in big changes to the proposals.
He said: “One of these recommendations was to reduce the tiers of staffing/management and to undertake a post-by-post, branch-by-branch review of the service, due to be completed soon.
“The original business case stated that up to 50 posts may be deleted but following more detailed work this figure has reduced to 23.5 posts; this will not include any compulsory redundancies.
“Staff have been involved throughout the process and are fully aware of these changes.
“The library service review will also see opening hours extended by approximately 35 hours across the service as a whole at no extra cost.
“The service has invested in new technology that has enabled us to reduce or remove back office tasks and enable staff to now focus directly on working with customers, for example, helping them to use new self-issue terminals.
“This has been working very well and we’ve received positive comments from staff and customers as a result of running a number of pilots in several libraries.”
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