Public Employee Press

Library locals slam Post lies

When the New York Post twisted the truth beyond recognition to attack members’ pensions, the presidents of DC 37’s three library locals hit back with the facts.

In a letter to the editor, which the Post was apparently afraid to print, they blasted the tabloid’s Feb. 24 editorial as “a wonder of innuendo and misleading information.”
The editorial, titled “Fat in the Libraries,” was based on a so-called “news” article claiming that, “Some of the richest pensions in the state are doled out ... to recently retired city librarians.”

The Post’s examples of retired Librarians — former Senior Vice President Priscilla Southon, with a pension of $188,846 a year, and former Director of Branches Mary Conwell, with $184, 498 — were both top management. But the editorial gave the impression that “the other 1,126 library retirees now collecting a total of $20.6 million a year” were also receiving great riches in their pension checks.

“Even elementary arithmetic,” subtracting the two management examples and dividing the remaining cost by the number of retirees, “shows an average pension of $17,096 — hardly a great reward for many years of work,” said the local leaders.

“How strange that your editorial makes no distinction between the high pensions paid to management and the much lower ones paid to the average library worker,” wrote presidents Carol Thomas of New York Library Guild Local 1930, Eileen Muller of Brooklyn Library Guild Local 1482, and Margalit Susser of Queens Library Guild Local 1321.

The Post — recently picketed by union and community activists for a racist cartoon depicting President Barack Obama as an ape (see page 21) — went on to call City Council members “drunken sailors” for restoring previous mayoral budget cuts. Supporting this year’s cut, the editorial said Council members “will soon be bleating about ‘how crucial libraries are,’— Yada, yada.”

The union letter explained that while the Council “does recognize the importance of libraries,” the mayor’s cuts are seldom fully restored, leaving the libraries to operate on a budget smaller than in 2001.”