Public Employee Press

40 years of unionism at Brooklyn Library

Seventy members and guests attended a celebration Dec. 5 marking the 40th anniversary of Brooklyn Library Guild Local 1482.

On Nov. 1, 1966, Brooklyn Public Library employees became the first library workers in the city to form a union. Workers in Queens (Local 1321) and Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island (Local 1930) soon joined their ranks.

“It’s very important for us to remember our history,” said Local 1482 President Eileen Muller. “This occasion provides an inspiration to begin a careful process of documenting our past,” she said at the event, which was part of a general membership meeting held at Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Heights branch.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts described the Brooklyn Library Guild’s founding as an integral part of the wave of public sector organizing that swept New York City in the 1960s. “The New York City library workers’ decision to organize also had an important impact around the country as a model for library workers who wanted to form unions,” Roberts said.

Adrian Straker of the Brooklyn Borough President’s Community Relations Dept. came to the celebration with a proclamation naming Dec. 4 “Brooklyn Library Guild Day.”

The roots of the union stretch as far back as the 1920s, when Brooklyn library workers formed a staff association without any legal bargaining rights.

The spark for the organizing drive in the 1960s occurred when Librarians were forced to put in 8-hour days while the clerical staff worked 7-hour shifts.

Two days before the vote to unionize, BPL management cut the Librarians’ workday to 7 hours, but they went ahead and voted to form the union anyway.

Today, Local 1482 represents clerical, blue collar, white collar and professional workers at Brooklyn Public Library.