Public Employee Press

Library workers demand
R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Local 1930 demonstrates against a communications gap, shortstaffing and a misguided transfer of 400 employees.

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Library workers are up in arms about a plan of the New York Public Library to transfer about 400 workers to a building in a rundown and possibly toxic area in Queens.

The transfer was among a number of misguided policies and practices that New York Public Library Guild Local 1930 protested at a boisterous demonstration Dec. 22 in front of the famous lions at the central library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

Local 1930 members and coworkers in Local 374 are upset about the corporate mentality of a new management team, which has failed to keep the union up-to-date about new hiring and a restructuring of the library system. Members say top managers haven’t been forthcoming when meeting with employees and have failed to communicate about policy changes and staffing.

Union leaders and members are aghast over an apparent new policy of needlessly selling off real estate when the library has an endowment of $800 million. Members say the property sales will undermine services and working conditions. “We are in the business of books and education,” Local 1930 President Carol Thomas said. “Why are they selling the buildings?”

Members chanted and carried placards as they marched before Patience and Fortitude, the lion statues that guard the library’s majestic Beaux-Arts main building, and took breaks to talk to passersby about what they described as mismanagement. The signs included statements like “NYPL Is a Public Library, Not a Real Estate Firm,” “Respect Library Work. We Serve the People of New York!” “Don’t Sell Our Buildings! Keep Our Staff in Manhattan!”

“We have been shafted,” said Rafael Ocasio, a Library Technical Assistant at the central library, which he said is becoming a catering hall as the library adopts corporate-like funding practices and kowtows to its elite patrons.

The transfer to a leased building in Queens would disrupt the lives of many workers, increasing their commutes by up to an hour, Ocasio and other workers said. The library plans to centralize its cataloging work at the Queens building in 2009. Members are concerned about a TV news report that the area is polluted, and thelocal has asked the DC 37 Safety and Health Dept. to investigate.

Members said an alternative would be to refurbish a nearby NYPL building known as the Annex. But rumors have it that the building is destined to be sold.

Local leaders and many members were outraged to learn in November that the library had sold its Donnell Branch — a tourist attraction as the home of the stuffed animal that inspired A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books — to Orient-Express Hotels for $59 million. The refurbished building will include a smaller branch, an 11-story hotel and five floors connecting to the 21 Club on 53rd Street.

“We are dealing with a corporate takeover, outsourcing, privatization and a staff cutback,” said Hank Samback, the Information Assistant Representative on the local executive board.

“The library intends to shrink the workforce,” said Cuthbert Dickenson, president of Quasi-Public Employees Local 374, which represents blue-collar workers at the library.

“They are uprooting people without discussion and without seriously finding out whether it will be efficient,” said Joe Reece, Local 374’s NYPL chapter chair. He said the transfer would create tremendous hardships for his coworkers.