A SECOND wave of strikes are due to hit Southampton’s libraries over council plans to replace librarians with volunteers.

The two-day strike this Friday and next Monday follows a strike last month that saw more than 100 people join picket lines across the city.

Library closures are expected across the city including Portswood, Bitterne, Woolston, Shirley and the city’s Central library.

Librarians are protesting at the Conservative-controlled council’s plans to scrap funding for seven librarians and replace them with volunteers in order to save £112,000. They also plan to close Millbrook Library.

Following the last strike on June 21 Unison officials met with council chiefs to urge a re-think of their plans but the talks were unsuccessful, with council bosses reaffirming their plans to recruit members of the public to carry out unpaid work in the libraries.

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Unison Branch Secretary, Mike Tucker, said: “Conservative councillors are hell-bent on running down services, which have taken generations to build up.

“Libraries need professional staff to provide a modern service to the people of Southamp-ton.

“Untrained, unskilled, unreliable volunteers will not provide this service. Southampton librarians are determined to resist the destruction of the library service.

“At a time when the council has revealed that in 2009/10 it spent £1.3m on the salaries of 12 senior managers, it is unacceptable to scrap seven library jobs in order to save £112,000.”

He added that Southampton libraries are already understaffed, with unfilled vacancies and jobs deleted in previous budget cuts.

It is feared the loss of trained librarians will result in a loss of valuable services to children, the unemployed and the elderly.

Members of the powerful Unison union voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action in a postal ballot and a policy of non-cooperation with volunteer recruits will be adopted.

Southampton City Council says that it is trying to modernise and improve its libraries while making them more cost-efficient.

It insists that there will be no redundancies.

A spokesman from South-ampton City Council said: “Positive discussions are currently under way to try and avoid this industrial action.”