Blatant Berry: Workplace Rights at Risk
Support the victims of unwise management
By John N. Berry III, Editor-in-Chief -- Library Journal, 6/1/2005
There is fear, concern and coercion in too many libraries these days. Morale is falling. Directors and administrators who used to be library champions are losing touch. Many are infatuated with new buildings and new technological solutions, even while tough economic times demand deep budget cuts and even staff reductions. Salaries remain stuck at their low levels. No new hiring is possible, and many older librarians are postponing retirement, waiting for better times. Technological experimentation continues, and new management fads and theories are forced on the disgruntled work force.
Unions get more militant as contracts sit unrenewed, layoffs mount, and staff get spread more thinly throughout the library system. Everyone discovers how difficult it is to make staff happy without money, more help, or more hours.
In one library, a union is voted in, and its leaders are on the program of a new unit about unions and libraries of the state library association at its conference. The library director tells managers that if staff sent to the conference spend time at the union program, money must be docked from their pay.
At another library, a broadcast email from the director tells employees they are not allowed to express negative opinions about the recent adoption of new technology or new policies while on the job. Morale plummets.
No one denies the legality of these pronouncements from administrators to their workers already in despair about their job situations. But you must challenge the judgment in sending out such messages. They may not be unfair labor practices, but they are damned unwise. Such coercive notices will simply drive morale to lower depths. The fallout will have a negative impact on performance and, ultimately, on library service.
Some time ago, the American Library Association Council sent a proposed Resolution on Workplace Speech for vetting by its Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC). I am glad to see that it is finally coming back to the Council floor. The simple message of the resolution is this: "Libraries should permit and encourage the full and free expression of views by staff on nonconfidential professional and policy matters." According to a recent report from ALA president Carol Brey-Casiano, the IFC found that "the Resolution on Workplace Speech does not comport with current case law regarding workplace speech," concluding that "ALA cannot give its members advice and information that is contrary to current case law."
Of course ALA has frequently given advice that is contrary to statute and case law. As one ALA councilor pointed out, the Council has opposed loyalty oaths, the USA PATRIOT Act, and currently is against the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), among others. ALA spent more than $1 million to challenge CIPA in court. ALA lost, but its opinion was clear.
The first lesson that emerges from these episodes is simply that many library administrators are about as enlightened about staff as are the bosses at Wal-Mart or MacDonald's. The second is that it is unlikely that these embattled library workers will get much help from ALA, especially if it runs all workplace rights proposals through either its conservative legal counsel, or its administrator-dominated ALA Council.
We had hopes that ALA's new Allied Professional Association (APA) would be the place to pursue working conditions, but, so far, it has turned out to be a paper tiger. Let's hope APA, unions, and all the institutes, workshops, and programs we devote to "leadership" can find substantive ways to support the workplace rights of our colleagues. We must stand with staff as they seek to make libraries a workplace worthy of the professional values they ought to represent.
