Friday, June 2, 2023

Dartmouth Library Staff Affiliate with AFSCME Local 93

On April 18, the Dartmouth College Library Workers’ Union made a public announcement that we were affiliating with AFSCME Local 93 and filing for an election with the National Labor Relations Board. We are now in the midst of that vote. On May 19, the NLRB sent out ballots, which must be returned by June 12. 

Library staff are now organizing to form a union not because we want public accolades, but because we see firsthand how Dartmouth budget policy is eroding our institution, and we want to help it — and ourselves — to make the library everything it can and should be.

 

--Timothy Wolfe,Acquisitions Supervisor at the Dartmouth Library. 


Even as Dartmouth’s endowment has grown, the library’s slice of the pie has waned. In the last five years, we’ve actually sustained $2 million in budget cuts. In that time, we have lost the equivalent of 30 full-time staff positions, and salaries for those of us who are left have not remotely kept up with the cost of living. A promotion structure for librarians was abruptly terminated in 2020, leaving all library staff without a path for professional advancement other than to take a job elsewhere. Two of our locations — Kresge Physical Sciences Library and Paddock Music Library were abruptly shuttered in 2021 without warning or community input. 

The library is not treated as a priority, and this has taken its toll. A workplace once known for its people staying for full 40-year careers has suddenly become a place of rapid and constant turnover, as new recruits discover our working conditions and poor morale and soon make for the exits.  


See article Wolfe: Dartmouth Library Staff Need a Union

Library staff members work hard for this community, but College administration has taken them for granted far too long.


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