University of California Librarians- It’s better than nothing

The University of California announced Tuesday that it has reached two tentative agreements with the American Federation of Teachers union to provide various benefits and increases for the university’s more than 350 librarians and 3,000 lecturers.

The tentative agreement for librarians, which includes being able to participate in the annual academic merit program for 2011-12 with increases effective July 1 and in a one-time merit-based salary increase program for 2011-12 effective Oct. 1, is currently being voted on by union members.
Librarians are resigned to the tentative agreement, said Shayee Khanaka, librarian for the linguistics and Middle East collections at UC Berkeley and a union member.
“It’s better than nothing, but there’s obviously a lot of room for improvement,” Khanaka said. “At this point, it’s hard to further negotiate — we’re fighting to just keep what we already have.”