When it comes to picking a fight, taking on Toronto Public Library’s workers is about as dumb as it gets.
Councillor Paul Ainslie, chair of the city’s Library Board, has decided to drop the gloves with 2,300 mostly female part-time workers who are known for the beloved service they provide at TPL’s 98 branches. Modest, innovative and willing to stretch a public dollar as far as it can go, library workers are everything citizens should hope for in a public service and are now on strike.
When other municipal workers went on strike in 2009 over the elimination of the sick bank provision in their collective agreements, TPL’s union accepted the concession without a work stoppage. The union also gave management more flexibility to assign work (I was on the Library Board at that time).
So when a group of workers who have made such reasonable requests of their employer for so many years stands up to say that the Library Board is making them an unreasonable offer, I find it impossible to dismiss their claim. At issue is the Library Board’s demands to rollback job security provisions, increase the number of part-time workers, and make it more difficult for part-time workers to eventually get full-time work.
Far from the caricature that the mayor has painted of our public servants, these are people who have earned my support through their daily professionalism.
With a recent poll showing that over 60% of Torontonians feel like I do about library workers, Ainslie – who championed library branch closures last year and today told the Sun, “I think there is a big difference between people’s love of libraries and love of library unions” – is living in his Executive Committee bubble. Ainslie’s problem is that his bubble is about to burst. With 60% support for workers and 75% support for libraries, it isn’t just the downtown elite that will be on councillors; it will be Ford’s voters, too.
Last year, when the Ford administration was pushing draconian service cuts on Torontonians many campaigns emerged to defend important city programs. Save Riverdale Farm! Don’t cut TTC service! Keep your hands off community grants! But if awards were to be given for organization, the campaign to save our libraries run by the Toronto Public Library Workers’ Union would take the gold. Using catchy phrases, impassioned pleas and celebrity endorsements, TPLW president Maureen O’Reilly channeled all of that support into a single petition.
A poorly kept secret of political organizing is that petitions are an excellent vehicle to collect contact information for people that support your cause. That’s why an activist might be thrilled to get a petition with “only” a hundred names. But O’Reilly’s petition wasn’t tiny by any measure; it garnered well over 50,000 signatories.
Advantage: library workers.
The only question now is if Ainslie and the Library Board will do the right thing or if city council will be forced to take the matter out of their hands when those 50,000 people — representing the view of the majority of Torontonians — demand their libraries be reopened and a fair deal for library workers.
photo by Wylie Poon
Adam is a former Toronto Library Board member from 2007-2010
7 comments
Nice spin. We shall see how this all plays out.
Adam,
Your bubble is about to burst actually.
All you have been doing is fear mongering, not listening to other points of view.
60% of 600 people. 600 people were contacted for that poll, even if that was 100% of people polled. We live in a city of 2,600,000+.
Unions want “job security”, guess what? if minimum wage is not enough then you don’t get an Iphone/blackberry/smart phone, you cancel your cell phone.
Cell phones are luxuries, you won’t die if you don’t have one and you don’t NEED one to live.
You cut your expenses, it is called living within your means.
How can you justify so many branches being open on a Monday morning with no one in them? Monday mornings at many branches are slow.
Why does the Runnymede branch have 3 staff at the desk counter, Runnymede is not a big branch.
We don’t need that many staff with automatic check out technology.
If many workers are paying for school and can’t pay bills? Well…go part time to school.
What about getting another job?oh no, their part-time job must give them everything.
Instead of carrying an 8 course load, take 4 or whatever you can afford.
I never supported full closure of branches. I supported temporary closure of branches when no one was in them. Like on Monday mornings for MANY branches.
Nothing wrong with looking at how many staff the TPL has.
Why should they have a job for life? How many jobs have you had in your life-time? I went the other day to the Riverdale branch just before 2pm…..E to the M to the P to the T to the Y. EMPTY. That is a waste of taxpayers’ money. I stayed until about 2:45pm. 2 ppl came as I was leaving. so for just over 45 minutes, only ppl there were TPL staff.
while i have been frequently using my ereader lately and the “virtual Library” is still open, i will be keeping my book searching fingers to myself until a decent settlement is made.
@Justthefacts, so what do you think is reasonable?
@Glavic, why not lead by example and ask your employer to cut your pay to minimum wage and cut all your benefits? Don’t let the rest of us hold you back on your race to the bottom.
By my count, 41 of the 96 branches (two are currently closed for renovations) are not open Monday mornings. That’s nearly half. Exactly how many do you want to close?
Closing branches in the mornings is a very political process. Every community gets upset if it is their library that is reducing hours, even if they don’t use it.
I’m not familiar with Runnymede, but does it even have RFID yet? RFID technology is expensive, and rolling it out across such a large system takes time. In addition, the intention of RFID was to expand hours, not reduce staff.
Even with RFID, branches need at least two staff members working at all time for security reasons. When staff leave for meal breaks, or school visits, or meetings/committees at other locations, there needs to be at least two members of staff remaining in the branch. This means that over the lunch period, you need to have at least three staff members. Since you can’t make part-timers come in for only a couple of hours, after lunches you will always have at least 3 staff members until staff begin finishing their shifts at 5. Depending on who they are and the layout of the branch, they might do most of their work (processing materials, repairing/relabeling materials, filling holds, etc) at the circulation desk. Just because there are no members of the public there, doesn’t mean they are doing nothing.
What part-timers want is protection of their hours and benefits, a path to full-time work (since practically all full-timers in TPL must start as part-timers), and an assurance that, if they are competent and hard-working, they will not be laid off so the city can build subways. Nobody has asked for more money, or more vacation, or even for “jobs for life;” if their jobs are made obsolete they simply want to be redeployed somewhere where they can be useful. If too many staff become obsolete, then they want to be removed through attrition and voluntary separation. Does that really sound so unreasonable?
Job security is something everyone wants. Telling them that it is unreasonable to ask for job security because you don’t have it is silly. If you get a job that pays you half a million per year, does that give TPL workers the right to demand that as well?
If you want quality staff in your libraries, you need to pay them fairly and commit to them. If they have to worry about their jobs, no matter how good they are, they will leave. If you don’t offer them full-time work, they will leave. If the city treats library staff like Tim Hortons treats their staff, you will get service similar to Tim Hortons in your libraries, because those are the people you will have staffing your local branch. I doubt any regular library user wants that.
to Miroslav Glavic:have you been to all 98 branches on a Monday morning? how can you possibly judge what times and which days all branches should be closed? I happen to work in a very busy branch and even with RFID there are still issues that can’t be solved by the machines but by PSAs, such as problems with accounts. And who are you to be dictating how we should live our lives or how many jobs we should work when you have no idea how many hours some of us work in the library system. Not to mention what kind of people we have to deal with. Maybe some of us don’t want to be in school for 6 years just because Rob Ford wants to save a few bucks and put them in his own pocket. The use of libraries has gone up in recent years and yet our staff has constantly been cut. Why should someone stay in the system for 10 years and not be able to move up and get full-time work. And hello! we all pay taxes!! I’m sick and tired of hearing that..money can be saved in other places but not here. Do us a favour and don’t come to the library then if you have so little appreciation for them. Go and buy your books and save your tax dollars