Libraries are being kept open thanks to staff on zero-hours contracts. When used responsibly they can play a vital role

We see zero-hours contracts as a zero-sum game encapsulating all that's wrong with rampant capitalism. However, in reality it's more complicated than that and as author and second world war veteran Harry Leslie Smith has written, the zero-hours trend asks questions of us all.

I work for a London borough library service, with Unison posters in every staff room and "equal opps" our mantra. Even here you now find 20 or more "casuals" working across the borough alongside the more familiar public sector types, with their professional tags, increment-enriched salaries and pensions.

As casual library assistants we don't get paid much, but the council makes sure it pays us the London living wage of £8.80 an hour.

Tough times require tough measures and as recent figures show even responsible employers such as local authorities are turning increasingly to so-called temporary staff in order to keep, in this case, public services going. In the context of local government, this adaptability and increased flexibility could be seen as refreshing, admirable even.

If the council is proud of us they're not admitting it. The poisonous reputation of zero hours contracts will have something to do with that, as will continuing confusion over what exactly constitutes these infamous contracts. Perhaps the real reason it sometimes feels as if we are operating under the radar is because we typify the de-professionalisation of soft services – those where intelligence and quality of character, rather than vocational training, are what really count. This new economic realism threatens vested interests, in local government and beyond.

As external consultants review our service, memos arrive from the head of department reassuring staff they are the very heartbeat of the operation. But I only get to read them over shoulders as casuals are not trusted with email or internet access. We also never get invited to staff meetings. Nor, it seems, the departmental Christmas party. In short, we're not considered part of the corporate family.

If we really were temporary workers, this would be understandable but many of us have been here a year or more, and working in all the borough's libraries means we know the service at least as well as most single-site permanent staff.

Surely it is obvious by now that my class of worker is here to stay – even deeper local authority budget cuts due next year, as well as the disastrous state of the economy in general confirms it.

Let's hear it for zero-hours contracts. In the hands of responsible employers, they can play a vital role. My library service has only survived intact these last few years because of a high-calibre staff bought, relatively speaking, on the cheap. What's more, in all our diversity (this one has two degrees and 25 years' work experience outside local government) we have, if I say so myself, brought a much-needed blast of fresh air to the place.

Casuals should be paid more, just as others should be paid less. When the options available to local authorities are limited, the answer must be cut the fat not the substance.

My class of worker is in the vanguard of long-overdue adjustments required across the economy. These adjustments had to start somewhere. Not surprisingly they started at the bottom. If they end there, we can justifiably call zero-hours contracts retrograde and exploitative, a contributor to ever-greater social and economic inequality. If, on the other hand, this lean approach heralds widespread change, we could all be healthier.

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