Publishers Weekly: Unionized booksellers demonstrate outside NYC's Strand Bookstore

 Union booksellers rallied outside of New York City's famed Strand bookstore last week after a year of difficult relationships between labor and management, Publisher's Weekly reported.

Many of the workers in attendance had experienced three separate layoffs from the bookstore in the past year while Strand ownership had invested in Amazon stock and taken in more than a million dollars in payroll protection loans while laying off 188 employees last March alone.

Employees from nearby bookstores joined the Strand booksellers in their demonstration in solidarity.

Connexion: French educators and students to strike over COVID protections and pay

 A French teachers union estimated that about a third of all of France's teachers would go out on strike yesterday, January 26th, as frustration has risen around the nation's response to the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic, The Connexion has reported.

The union, SNUipp-FSU, said that members felt that the state had abandoned frontline workers in the midst of deteriorating situations making and called for the state to implement protection for teachers and students that rose to the challenge of COVID-19.

The unions are also demanding action on teacher salaries, which falls 7% below the global average for early and mid-career professionals, after promises and reforms made last year were deemed insufficient.

Students and parents are also joining the strike over frustration with the government's response to the pandemic.

France's nurses union also encouraged its school nurse members to join the teachers strike, saying the additional burdens placed on school nurses to test and contact trace COVID-19 prevented them from being able to tend to and care for students with other health needs.

Sun-Times: CTU and CPS at impasse as reopening stalled

 The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS) failed to reach an agreement around reopening physical school buildings by a Wednesday deadline.

As a result, CTU told members to continue working from home as the potential of a work stoppage mounted.

The two sides bought more negotiating time and education will continue at a distance for the remainder of this week, an attempt by CPS to cut off remote teaching and a forced return to the classroom could cause picket lines to pop up across the city according to an email CTU sent to its membership Tuesday night.

The move to full remote learning moves special education and preschool students back to online classrooms after returning to in person learning earlier in January.

A move by CPS to lock teachers out of virtual learning accounts, however, would result in education completely shutting down for all students in the CPS system. With CTU and its members unwilling to go back into the classroom under current conditions they feel are unsafe, such a lock out would, in effect, trigger a teachers strike.

The CTU and its members are concerned that reopening school buildings at this point would put its members and the larger Chicago community in danger in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. A concern made all the more real by the news of several new strains of COVID-19 appear to be more contagious and more likely in infect children than the strain first identified in late 2019. Some indications in the United Kingdom may also point to at least one of these strains being more deadly as well. One of these strains originating in the United Kingdom is expected to become the dominant United States strain my March.

From the perspective of CTU, it makes more sense to wait the remaining weeks before teachers are able to be vaccinated rather than rush people back into buildings and risk infecting teachers and staff, families, and the wider Chicago community.

NBC: Bellevue teachers say no to reopenning schools, judge refuses injunction, negotiations continue

 Last week Bellevue teachers voted to refuse to go back to in person teaching until they could receive vaccinations for COVID-19, local NBC affiliate KING-TV reported.

The school district looked to a judge to order an injunction, however the judge refused to order teachers back into the classroom. Instead, Bellevue School District openned the schools to the districts 775 second graders with substitutes forced to put themselves at risk on Friday.

Negotiations between the union and district over the weekend resulted in a cancellation of classes Monday in order to focus on reaching an agreement over the status of classes in the midst of a global pandemic with the relief provided by a vaccine on the horizon but not yet realized.

Alabama Local: Amazon urges NLRB to halt mail-in union vote

 Echoing calls heard for most of 2020 by Republicans claiming the potential for error or fraud in mail-in elections, Amazon has now turned to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to halt a mail-in union election the Board just approved of last week.

Alabama Local reports that the 6,000 Amazon employees of the Bessemer, AL warehouse are slate to begin receiving ballots February 8th which will then be counted March 30th. Employees cited COVID-19 outbreaks in Alabama when they requested for a mail-in election as the disease has wrecked havoc at Amazon warehouses and similar workplaces across the country; Amazon claims the NLRB has failed to define what a "COVID-19 outbreak" is in its ruling allowing the vote.

If the Bessemer employees vote in favor of unionizing, they will be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) and become the first union at the company within the United States, opening up opportunities for organizing at Amazon as well as other notoriously anti-union retail employers.

Education Week, NBC: Chicago Teachers vote to continue remote teaching, CPS pushes back return date

 Over the weekend members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to refuse to return to their classrooms until after vaccination against COVID-19. Chicago Public Schools (CPS), which had been calling such a vote an "illegal strike" has responded by moving the return to classroom date from Monday, January 25th to Wednesday, January 27th.

Education Week has information on the vote. Per Education Week, CTU saw 86% of its membership vote with 71% of participants voting to continue teaching from home. According to CTU, when kindergarten and special education teachers were ordered back on Jan 4th, only 19% of the students whose families had indicated they would send their students back actually showed up.

Discussions between CTU and CPS remain ongoing, however CPS announced that K-8th grade teachers who had been scheduled to report on Monday would have that date back until Wednesday according to a 5 Chicago, the cities' local NBC affiliate, report. Students are still expected to return to classrooms on February 1st.

CPS has said that it will be able to begin administering vaccinations in February for staff who are not eligible for the state's larger 1A or 1B role-out. This, of course, raises the question why schools would be opening up with vaccination so close?

Sun-Times: Chicago Teachers Union to collectively refuse in-person assignments

 As the COVID-19 pandemic heads into the new year with more contagious varients expected to become the dominant strains by March, Chicago teachers are voting on a collective action to refuse orders to return to full in person teaching Monday, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has noted the action would not constitute a strike as teachers would continue teaching from home. This has not stopped Chicago Public Schools (CPS) from labeling the action as an "illegal strike." 

Meanwhile, elected officials from local and state government gathered in support of the CTU in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood, pointing out that President Biden was calling for an end to recklessness in the national approach to COVID-19 they argued that teachers shouldn't be forced back into schools until they were able to get vaccinated.

UNISON: UK libraries should stay closed to protect library workers and families

 The United Kingdom's largest union, UNISON, has called for libraries to completely close during the UK's third lock down amid a new highly contagious strain of the COVID-19 virus.

The government's stated guidelines ask for libraries to continue services such as IT access and curbside service. Facing a growing health crisis UNISON views even these services as too dangerous for library workers, who will have to provide these services, and their families

Compounding the problem for library workers, the union argues, is the fact that many library workers are already isolating and more are to be deployed for food delivery and other services leaving already struggling libraries under staffed.

KSNT: UK students plan strike over rising COVID cases

 As positive COVID-19 cases rose to 546 on University of Kansas's campus last week, student organizing group the Jayhawk Liberation Front began organizing a student strike demanding a campus closure. Local NBC affiliate KSNT reports that students participating in the strike would not show up for scheduled classes or, in the case of online classes, not log on and email their professors informing them of their participation in the strike.

The petition demanding closure specifically calls out campus leadership for endangering the health of not only students on campus, but the surrounding community as well. Demands also include free exit testing, housing for students in need, and hazard pay for those who have to work.

Freep, News: UM grad students vote to strike

 Both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News are reporting that the roughly 1,000 member Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) at the University of Michigan (UM) has voted in favor of a strike against what members of the union say are unsafe working conditions in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Strikers will face an uphill battle as a new contract was just ratified in April and public sector strikes are illegal in Michigan, School officials are already speaking out against the action to the press claiming that it violates the terms of the contract that prevent GEO members from interfering with University business.

GEO points to the ongoing pandemic and the summer's uprisings against police brutality as evidence that, while a contract was agreed to in April, there are new issues that need agreement between the union and the university. Among the unions demands are calls for greater flexibility in how graduate students are able to conduct their work, including remote instruction, increased testing, and contract tracing. There are also calls for greater support for international students, ending university cooperation with police, and extensions on degree completion.

Post: D.C. Public Library Workers raising concerns about coronavirus safety

Towards the end of last week, the Washington Post reported that, despite the assurances of the library system head, library workers in the Washington D.C. public library system are raising what they say are serious concerns with safety around the spread of the coronavirus.

Employees in the system, which opened much more aggressively and earlier than many other public libraries across the country, say that the libraries are keeping them in the dark about potential cases and exposures, have failed to implement sufficient cleaning protocols, and are struggling with mask requirements. While many neighboring systems are limited to curbside access only, D.C. has opened up the inside of 14 locations across the city.

LitHub: Authors cancelling events at Free Library of Philadelphia over treatment of Black employees

At the end of June, Black employees of the Free Library of Philadelphia issued an open letter detailing the discrimination and disregard for safety following order for staff to return to library buildings. The letter is very much worth a read in its own right, especially as many of the issues detailed are not unique to Black workers in the FLP system.

The workers have now begun to see further support coming from authors who had scheduled events at the FLP. As of July 8th, LitHub reported that six authors had all cancelled events in solidarity with the workers after hearing that the concerns raised by Black workers were not being adressed and the situation on the ground had not improved.

PBS: Philly Free Library workers say 'No Confidence' in library leadership

Less than a day into the return of library workers to the physical spaces of the Philadelphia Free Library, and with no patrons allowed in the buildings, employees were already sharing stories of a woefully under prepared system that was beginning to open back up.

According to local PBS affiliate WHYY, employees reported expired and missing sanitizing wipe, nearly expired hand sanitizer, lack of soap, overheated, unclean spaces, and inadequate PPE among other concerns of misallocated resources and racism.

These concerns inspired a petition launched by unionized employees of the library system declaring "no confidence" in library leadership and demanding the Board of Trustees force the current library director to step down and for the union to be consulted on finding a replacement. The petition followed a day after Black library workers had released an open letter regarding racism in the library system.

Scapi: CPL employees ask patrons to not come to open library

Last weekend Scapi Magazine ran an article in which it quotes an anonymous Chicago Public Library employee imploring patrons not to come into the library when it reopens.

The plea comes in the form of an unsigned letter circulating on social media (the employee has withheld their name fearing retaliation from management) that states safety concerns are being brushed off, hand sanitizer in the libraries is expired, and the libraries lack enough plexiglass to run the library safely.

This letter comes after previous statements by AFSCME Local 31 in which the union said it had not been consulted in reopening considerations and was caught off guard when Library Commissioner Andrea Telli emailed staff earlier in the month asking them to report to work May 20th.

While Mayor Lauri Lightfoot initially seemed to backtrack on a proposed June 1st reopening after details of Telli's email leaked, Illinois and Cook County are preparing to enter phase 3 of reopening even as the county is seeing one of the largest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the country -- surpassing even Queens in New York City.

Tribune: Lightfoot contradicts CPL statement, Union responds

Following coverage by Book Riot last week on an email sent to Chicago Public Library employees setting a June 1st reopenning date, Lori Lightfoot, the city's mayor, disputed that any timeline had yet been established for reopenning the library.

The Chicago Tribune has both Lightfoot's response to concerns about the library's reopening as well as a response from AFSCME Local 31, which represents the city's municipal workers.

Book Riot: Chicago Public Library to rush reopening despite risk to workers and patrons

Chicago Public Libraries, one of the last major public library systems to close amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, sent an email to it's employees on May 14th setting June 1st as its target reopening date with employees expected to report next week Book Riot has reported. Staff members, who had already experienced working in a library system well after they felt comfortable, spent the evening in tears, anger, confusion, and outrage.

In the email from Andrea Telli, Commissioner of the Chicago Public Library, announced only vague details about what the library's safety precautions would look like upon the reopening of the library system and did not provide information about what will happen to employees that cannot access childcare or who rely on public transit to get to work that may not be available.

Also not mentioned in the email is how much protective equipment will be provided to staff. Workers are expected to wear cloth face masks and gloves but no information is given about how much PPE will be provided: gloves, for example, must be changed after every interaction in order to guard against cross contamination. Will enough equipment be provided for full time staff working their regular hours or part timers working 20 hours a week at the library?

Further questions continue to circulate around what it means to "limit" computer use or "abbreviate" reference, information, and circulation interactions.

With Illinois not expected to peak in confirmed COVID-19 cases until mid-June and with Chicago passing Queens, NY in terms of total confirmed cases on the same day Telli's email was sent out it is unclear why CPL is making the jump straight to a total reopening so soon.

Library workers deserve a safe, healthy space to work in. Libraries, while serving important functions, are not essential services and employees at libraries should not be used to make up for failures of the government to provide funding for services elsewhere... much less so in the midst of a public health crisis. The decision by the CPL to reopen is a reckless move that is putting unnecessary strain on its employees and will undoubtedly lead to many of them getting sick unnecessarily.

Libraries Gave Us Power: Library workers push back against resiliancy narratives amid pandemic

An important article up on the new blog Libraries Gave Us Power by one of the founders of the #closethelibraries and #protectlibraryworkers movements pushes back against the popular media narrative that all is well in public libraries as boards and management push workers to take on dangerous and unnecessary work in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It should go without saying, but libraries should absolutely not be putting their workers on the front lines of this public health crisis unnecessarily. As the above piece points out, library workers know all too well how dealing with the public means dealing with people who will not follow directions, people who intentionally cause problems, and people who get very angry over things beyond the individual worker's control.

Libraries have been used for a long time as a safety net of last resort by a system that has failed ordinary people, library workers -- particularly underpaid front line staff -- should not be offered up as sacrificial lambs because of this system's failures.

Book Riot: Library workers face lay offs and difficult decisions as institutions fail the test of supporting most vulnerable employees

An article posted last week to Book Riot has detailed the trials that some of the library field's most vulnerable workers have been facing amidst the global coronavirus pandemic.

As the article details, staff at libraries across the country are facing furloughs, being forced to work without adequate supplies or guidance, and in some cases being transferred to pandemic response work they are not trained or prepared for.

Some library worker advocates have begun tracking library layoffs and furloughs brought on by the pandemic in a shared Google Document located here. They are also encouraging the spread on social media of the hashtag #protectlibraryworkers. Organizers are also encouraging people to support library workers through the work of the HALO (Help A Library worker Out) fund.

Advocates for library workers argue that, with budgets already set for libraries at the beginning of the fiscal year, forcing library workers to decide to work in potentially dangerous environments or take paid time off (which many of the lowest paid library staff across the country do not have) or, worse, laying off or furloughing staff amidst this pandemic is both shortsighted and wrong.