Public Employee Press

Battling Bloomberg's budget:
Layoffs will harm community
Library workers

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Queens library workers demonstrated June 7 to support 234 colleagues who got pink slips in May and to protest millions in cuts within Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's proposed budget.

Dozens of members of Queens Library Guild Local 1321 and supporters from DC 37, the community and the City Council joined in the noontime rally at the Queens Central Library in Jamaica to voice outrage over the layoffs and service cuts.

"For over 100 years, our public libraries have served the Queens community," Local 1321 President John Hyslop told the crowd. "We appreciate your support."

Research Analyst Aliqae Geraci of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept. noted that the city's three library vsystems have suffered a 40 percent loss in funding since 2008. The $100 million total funding cut under Bloomberg's budget for the year beginning in July would cause 1,500 layoffs, said library administrators. Under the threat of being laid off for the second year in a row, Children's Librarian Selina Sharmin expressed her concern that the cutbacks would deprive the large immigrant community of Queens of a vital resource for services such as English instruction and employment assistance.

"We have to do whatever we can to save Queens Library," said City Council member Jimmy Van Bramer, who used to be a manager there.

Demonstrators wore T-shirts that said "We Shall Not Be Shushed. Save NYC Libraries" with a silhouette of a librarian with her finger at her lips. They carried signs with such messages as "No More Budget Cuts" and "Save Our Libraries."

Representatives of City Council members Daniel Dromm, Leroy Comrie, Elizabeth Crowley, James Sanders Jr. and Mark Weprin also spoke. Other speakers included Local 420 2nd Vice President Togba Porte, DC 37 Director of Field Operations Barbara Ingram-Edmonds, Queens Library Director Thomas W. Galante, Leroy Gadsden, president of the NAACP chapter in Jamaica, Christian Zabriskie of the Urban Librarians United activist group and schoolchildren who formed a library support group, Young Women's Leadership. "I think it's, like, really stupid to cut libraries," said Briana Joseph, 11. "Children need libraries to know where they come from, to know their history."

DC 37's library locals took out ads against the budget in AmNY, Metro and 35 community newspapers.