New Jersey Library Association and Unions

Twitter discussion at Andy@wawoodworth
https://twitter.com/wawoodworth/status/1035278804409823232

@njla's Exec Board voted to provide money to a library for legal bills as it fought against unionization of its staff Minutes here: https://njla.org/sites/default/files/sites/all/files/minutes/NJLA%20Executive%20Board%20Meeting%20Minutes%20June%2019%202018.pdf … Pertinent blurb here:

https://twitter.com/wawoodworth/status/1035278804409823232

“Women, Public Libraries, and Library Unions: The Formative Years.”

Milden, James W. (1977) “Women, Public Libraries, and Library Unions: The Formative Years.”The Journal of Library History, 12(2), 150–158.

 The debate over librarian membership in labor unions, although a thorny issue in contemporary librarianship, is scarcely new in library history. Early attempts to unionize public libraries began about 1917, with union activity at the Library of Congress begin ning three years earlier. Despite the paucity of library unions during those formative years and the absence of widespread support among librarians, the ongoing dialogue between pro- and anti-union sympathizers is significant, not only as a background for under standing current attempts at library unionism, but for discerning librarians' conceptions of themselves, their social role, and their growing concern for the meaning of professionalism. So, too, the story of early library unionism is an important and unwritten chapter in the history of female librarianship.1

Plimoth Plantation Workers Deserve a Fair Contract-Society of Allied Museum Professionals

"For if we do not sing we shall weep"
The hardest part of being a legal union that the management of #plimothplantation refuses to recognize, is we feel so alone. 
400 years ago when the #pilgrims first set foot here at #plymouthmathey must have felt the same way. Alone and isolated. But they stood fast, stood strong and stood together in the face of adversity. They overcame and persevered and today their names sing out through the ages as a #lightinthedarkness 
We ask for recognition, fair negotiation and a fair contract.

Details?
Search for "Society of Allied Museum Professionals on Facebook.


--Thanks W.S.

Librarians Will Not Be Silent

Hello,

I hope that your summer is going well.

For your librarian colleagues in the UC the summer season has been more than a normal summer break since we are in the middle of bargaining for a new contract with the entire Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) open for negotiations.  We hope that you could support our efforts.  The recent letter and petition by two faculty associations speak to some of the predicament we continue to encounter every time we come to the table with UCOP representatives that include library HR Representatives from each campus. 

The faculty letter and petition are available from our union blog below.
https://ucaftlibrarians.org/

Latest article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Do-College-Librarians-Have/244377/?cid=SLFEED

Thank you, gary

gerardo "gary" a. colmenar, Librarian

Anthropology, Asian American Studies, Linguistics

Native American Studies, and Philosophy

Reference Department, UCSB Library

U.C. Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9010
805 893.8067

colmenar@ucsb.edu

Digital Library Federation Working Group on Labor

LG-73-18-0236

The Pennsylvania State University Libraries, in collaboration with the University of Missouri -Kansas City University Libraries, will host two meetings to explore the experiences of grant-funded digital laborers in the libraries, archives, and museums (LAM) communities, and subsequently, will inform the development of best practices for the evaluation process of project proposals. The work builds on research conducted in 2017 by the Digital Library Federation Working Group on Labor that revealed the need to bring together stakeholders from across LAM communities. The project seeks to address the issues created and reproduced by short-term and grant-funded positions, how those impact the lives and professions of the workforce, and how they affect investments made in national digital LAM infrastructures and services.

 https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/lg-73-18-0236

Joint Letter in Support of Librarian Academic Freedom

Joint Letter in Support of Librarian Academic Freedom

August 18, 2018

President Janet Napolitano
University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607
Email: president@ucop.edu

Joint statement by CUCFA and CA-AAUP:

On July 26, 2018 UC negotiators rejected a proposal by the UC-AFT Unit 17 that academic freedom be recognized as a right of all UC librarians as academic employees. UC negotiators reportedly argued that academic freedom is granted only to faculty and students “to enable free expression in the classroom,” that it is “a professional standard established by faculty, for faculty,” and that their position was consistent with “AAUP’s stance on Academic Freedom.”

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has rejected UC negotiators’ claims and clarified that since 1972 it has recognized librarians as faculty (Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians – https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/2013Bulletin/librarians.pdf). Specifically, the joint statement affirms that:

College and university librarians share the professional concerns of faculty members. Academic freedom is indispensable to librarians in their roles as teachers and researchers. Critically, they are trustees of knowledge with the responsibility of ensuring the intellectual freedom of the academic community through the availability of information and ideas, no matter how controversial, so that teachers may freely teach and students may freely learn. Moreover, as members of the academic community, librarians should have latitude in the exercise of their professional judgment within the library, a share in shaping policy within the institution, and adequate opportunities for professional development and appropriate reward.

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations (CUCFA) and the California Conference of AAUP chapters (CA-AAUP) wholeheartedly agree with AAUP’s 1972 statement, recognize librarians as fellow faculty, and jointly support UC-AFT Unit 17’s request that all librarians be “entitled to academic freedom, as their primary responsibility to their institution and profession is to seek, state, and act according to the truth as they see it.”

CUCFA and CA-AAUP therefore urge UC President Napolitano to instruct UC negotiators to grant academic freedom to university librarians as they rightly deserve and have requested.

Sincerely,
Stanton Glantz,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
Professor of Medicine, UCSF

cc: UC Regents

Unions Fight for All Workers

Viewpoint: Unions Aren’t Exclusive Clubs—We Fight for All Workers | Labor Notes

Our strength comes from our solidarity. The whole point of Janus and the many court cases coming down the pipeline is to destroy our collective power and identity by making unions about individual decisions.

Billionaire-backed anti-union groups want us arguing over who’s paying for what, rather than fighting the boss. Getting rid of exclusive representation and the duty of fair representation just plays into their hands.

Our fights should be for a better quality of life for all workers and communities, where nobody is just scraping by.

Labor and the Class Idea

Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada, by Barry Eidlin. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Collective actors such as unions do not simply exist; they are formed and re-formed through social struggles. Moreover, to the extent that we can ascribe interests to classes, the mere fact that such a class interest exists in no way guarantees that members of that class will either be aware of it or mobilize in pursuit of it. Interests must be organized. In particular, it is parties and unions that do the work of organizing interests when it comes to creating something identifiable as “the working class.”

Good review in Labor Notes.

Public sector unions are defiant in the wake of Janus Supreme Court decision

Public sector unions are defiant in the wake of Janus Supreme Court decision

Why the Janus Decision Matters to Library Unions: Supreme Court ruling may affect public-sector library workers

Writing in American Libraries  Carrie Fisher explores "Why the Janus Decision Matters to Library Unions: Supreme Court ruling may affect public-sector library workers."