On the Picket Line

More than three hundred British Library workers are on strike this week. They are demanding an inflation-proof pay rise, restoration for last year’s shortfall and an ‘end to non-payment of alternative working patterns for security staff on a four-day week working pattern’. A previous two-week walkout ended in November; in the middle of it, the library’s CEO, Rebecca Lawrence, resigned after only ten months in the job. Management’s latest offer, a 3.8 per cent pay rise (other public sector workers have been given 5 per cent), was unanimously rejected. Last Friday, the interim CEO, Jeremy Silver, told the strike organisers that they ‘don’t live in a real world’.

On Monday morning, more than a hundred people formed a picket line outside one of the entrances to the library’s St Pancras building. ‘We’ve got a library with no books, no readers, no digital content, no front-facing staff and absolutely no clue!’ Nick Alen, the Public and Commercial Services Union branch chair, told his colleagues as they stood with their placards in the rain. ‘I can’t pay my rent with prestige,’ one sign said. Another was a mock-up of the cover of Great Expectations, with ‘Great’ crossed out and replaced by ‘Reasonable’.

‘People need to pay their bills,’ one of the pickets told me. Some are forced to work several jobs. Many talked of the effect of the 2023 cyberattack on their workload: for a long time, they were required to handle paper forms and sift through offline spreadsheets. Some online services still haven’t been restored.

Several people mentioned abuse from frustrated customers. While senior staff avoided public areas after the incident, they said, the lowest-paid workers had to deal with shouting and swearing. Many readers have been supportive, though: the last time I was in Rare Books and Music, the issue desk had an array of thank you cards. As the rally went on, cars honked and passersby stopped to express solidarity with the employees of ‘this fantastic institution’.

A sound archivist – the BL’s material ranges from Holocaust survivors’ testimonies to recordings of extinct languages – told me he and his colleagues could earn more in the private sector but they work here for less pay because ‘we believe in what we do.’ It’s hard to remain committed, however, when the bosses’ attitude is ‘bordering on contempt’.

‘They’re trying to divide us,’ a conservator said. Not everyone at the library has received the same offer, and only 17 per cent of staff have been guaranteed the living wage.

The hackers who struck in 2023 stole employees’ personal data and shared it online. The only help offered to affected staff was a scam-tracking app, which most of them found useless. A victim of domestic abuse had to move house after their address was leaked.

In 2024, the BL published a review of the cyberattack. ‘The Technology department was overstretched before the incident and had some staff shortages,’ it says. To address ‘capacity and capability constraints within Technology and elsewhere’, management turned to outsourcing. The paper ends with sixteen lessons for the sector, including: ‘proactively manage staff and user wellbeing.’

Last week, a ‘health and wellbeing newsletter’ was sent to staff. Titled ‘In the Pink’, it offers ‘a few money-saving present ideas’: ‘consider not giving presents this holiday season’ but instead ‘propose an alternative like spending quality time together.’ Or try charity shops, even if ‘it might seem odd to give somebody a second-hand gift.’ Or ‘use your creative skills to the fullest’ to produce ‘homemade or home-baked presents’. One of the strikers called the missive ‘jaw-droppingly insensitive’; another said she never got it: she has to share a computer with several colleagues, and there have been problems with the printers. ‘I’ve never felt so insulted,’ she said.

A man working in Maps and Manuscripts told me that the long-awaited online catalogue still leaves his understaffed department struggling to fulfil all the requests it gets. ‘They started running the library as a shopping centre,’ he said. I was reminded of the posters that appeared around the site a few years ago: ‘If it happens in the library, it’s research.’ A public service institution, the librarian said, shouldn’t be treated as a profit-making one.

Unlike the reading rooms, the café was open yesterday. There were donation boxes in the foyer: ‘Inspired by what you’ve seen today?’ Outside, a railway worker stopped by the picket line and offered the strikers a ten-pound note. ‘That’s terrible,’ he said when he was told what was going on. ‘Hope you win.’