Public Employee Press

Local 1321 protests Queens Library contracting

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Queens Library Guild Local 1312 is picking up its fight against contracting out.

On Nov. 8, the local filed an improper practice charge against the Queens Borough Public Library's use of private custodians. The IP, prepared with the help of the DC 37 Legal Dept., accuses the library of violating the local's contract by outsourcing the work without first holding a labor-management meeting. The IP also charges that the administration's refusal to disclose information on the contracting violates state labor law.

"We aren't going to let up," said Local 1321 President John Hyslop.

The outsourcing "stinks," Jr. Library Custodian Deborah Wynn said Oct. 17 as she handed out leaflets informing the public of the damage the library's contracting-out scheme could do in Queens.

Besides fighting management in the streets and in negotiations, Local 1321 is attacking the contracting policy in the mainstream media and on Facebook and Twitter.

Earlier this year, the library's trustees entered an open-ended contract with Busy Bee Cleaning Service to use contracted custodians. Initially, the administration said it would only use the private workers at Queens Central Library in Jamaica, but it later assigned them to at least one branch.

Members gathered outside the central library on Oct. 17 for informational picketing to tell patrons about management's contracting-out scheme. The demonstrators brought the giant inflatable rat that the city's labor movement uses to shame employers with bad labor policies.

Deborah Wynn, a Local 1321 delegate, said she was concerned that management might significantly expand the contracting and phase out the in-house staff, which happened years ago with the library's Security Guards.

Financial squeeze

"They want to keep squeezing people," said Christian Arffmann, a Young Adult Librarian at the Teen Center in the Flushing Branch Library, suggesting that the outsourcing comes from the anti-union playbook of employers throughout the country. "They want people without union rights."

As part of its campaign against the practice, Local 1321 has reached out to labor-friendly politicians. Earlier this year, City Council member Daniel Dromm wrote Thomas W. Galante, the library's president and chief executive officer, to express concern about the contracting out.

"I truly believe in the Queens Library's mission to serve all of our many diverse communities," he said. "However, I feel that your efforts to undermine union jobs for these very same community members run counter to your mission.

"I ask that the Queens Library immediately revisit its decision and stop de-unionizing jobs held by the people you are supposed to serve."

Astonishingly, a week after the protest, the local learned that the library handed out raises to its top managers, while the union members have not received a raise for four years.

"It's disgusting, and the members are really upset," Hyslop said. "It just boggles the mind. I just don't understand how they can be so callous as to give themselves raises."

Hyslop expressed his disappointment that a public library system would take the lead of private-sector employers whose low-wage policies have weakened the country's living standards. "We heard that at least one of the custodians was being paid the minimum wage and receiving public assistance before he decided to leave," Hyslop said. "This is very disheartening."