Last month unison members in Southampton went on strike over the city council's plans sack employees and replace them with unpaid volunteers. The council plans to get rid of 6 librarians. According to unison this will lead to one library being run exclusively by volunteers.

This, I am afraid, is a sign of things to come. As Richard noted last week, Cameron's Big Society is set to involve replacing public service professionals with unpaid labour. And this is a big problem for both public sector workers and public service users. The most immediate problem for Southampton's Librarians is that they face losing their jobs at a time when jobseekers outnumber vacancies by a ratio of 5 to 1. In other words they the real possibility of long term unemployment. More generally, the use of volunteer labour raises a damocles axe above the heads of all public sector workers. How easy will it be to push for decent wages, when your employer has an army of unpaid Gill Archer types at its disposal.