Public Employee Press

Contracting OUT
Queens Library workers fight back

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Local 1321 has launched a battle against contracting out custodial work at the Queens Public Library.

In April, the library's trustees approved a contract with a private company for custodial services. Supposedly, the contract custodians were only for the Central Library, but they have already showed up at other work sites.

Local 1321 geared up for a fight-back campaign quickly after the trustees' voted for the contract. The workers aim to convince the administration to cancel its open-ended contract with Busy Bee Cleaning Service and instead beef up its own custodial staff.

"We have been calling for more hiring for a long time now," said Local 1321 President John Hyslop, pointing out that the custodian staff has dropped by at least 25 positions over the past five years.

The local is using informational flyers, social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, lobbying and a public relations campaign to reach out to patrons and political leaders to support its campaign against contracting out, one of the key weapons conservatives and anti-government interests use to weaken unions and undermine public services.

Cash-strapped public libraries sometimes contract out payroll processing, book binding and janitorial and security jobs to duck the cost of health-care and pension benefits and to bust unions, As contracting spreads, the use of lower-paid contract workers depresses the wages of public service and private-sector workers alike.

Creeping contracting out

Some localities have taken the radical step of privatizing their entire operations, and the Library Systems & Services, LLC firm runs about 20 systems nationwide. But some library systems have had to scrap the private contracts when anticipated savings proved illusory or privatized services became too expensive, according to In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and responsible contracting.

Local 1321 members are concerned that they face creeping contracting out, a long-term plan to get rid of unionized employees. In addition to the contract custodians at the Queens Central Library, the library has already assigned others to a branch under renovation and to the largest branch library, in Flushing,

"We're scared," said custodian Thomas Wynn, who is the local's vice president for blue collar workers. "We saw what happened with the security guards, so we are worried about our jobs."

In the mid-1990s, the Queens library hired a private security guard company, supposedly to supplement its own unionized guards. But in 2010, the library laid off two security guards, leaving only one on its payroll, and today, about a dozen lower-paid, non-union contract security guards monitor the Central Library and the Flushing Branch. The other 62 branches must fend for themselves.

Queens Public Library, one of the city's three public library systems, claims it can't afford more permanent custodians. But the local argues that the resources are there and calls the contracting out an example of the pay inequity that undermines the morale of front-line workers at the library.

Since 2011, Hyslop says, the library has allocated $2.7 million for management raises and hiring, including $340,000 in raises for administrators, with one manager getting a $38,000 pay hike. The library paid CEO and President Thomas Galante $379,000 from April 2011 to May 2012, almost double the $204,000 a year the city pays to each of its Fire, Corrections and Investigations commissioners.

A low-wage, union-free agenda?

But while the library has doled out generous raises to its managers and earmarked $18,000 for two new supervisory custodian positions, front-line workers haven't seen a raise in four years. Four new custodian positions to provide adequate staffing for the Central Library would cost $137,000.

"In addition to our disagreement over the library's fiscal priorities," Hyslop said, "this raises the question of how taxpayers wish to use their tax dollars."

By contracting out, Queens Library appears to be headed down a low-wage, union-free path.

Busy Bee's non-supervisory custodians get from $14.94 to $15.50 an hour, according to the minutes of the April trustees meeting, while the custodians in Local 1321 are paid from $12.17 to $25.25, including health and other benefits.

"By contracting out, Queens Library is joining the employers in this country who are encouraging a race to the bottom," Hyslop said. "I don't think New York taxpayers really want to have their tax dollars used to lower the living standard of the working class."