Heat Melts 15% Hike
Pay Offer Yanked, Librarians Furious

The Chief September 15, 2000 by deidre McFadyen

For 18 heady days this summer New York Public Library librarians thought they had achieved the goal that they have long fought for: a 15% catch-up raise that would bring their wages into line with librarians in the private sector and suburban sectors.

But to their dismay, according to the union that represents the 540 librarians, NYPL management pulled out of the handshake agreement on Aug. 10, saying the city refused to go along with it. It substituted a significantly less generous wage offer predicated on lengthening the workweek by 2-1/2 hours. The union rejected the second proposal.

"We thought we had a deal," said Ray Markey, President of the New York Public Library Workers Local 1930 of District Council 37. "The members are incensed. We are going to protest at every single function that the library has. Hopefully, library management will come to their senses."

About 200 librarians demonstrated outside NYPL's main library on 42nd Street Sept. 5 calling on library management to stand by its original offer.

DC 37 has also filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, charging that the NYPL is obligated to stick by the original accord.

Michael Zavelle, the NYPL's Senior Vice President for Administration, Finance and Business Affairs, maintained that the union had not formally accepted the first proposal because there were a still a couple of unresolved issues. He also claimed that library officials pointed out to the union that the proposal was dependent on the "non-objection" of the city.

Mr. Zavelle said Giuliani administration officials vetoed the first offer because they didn't believe that the NYPL had sought sufficient "productivity increases" from the union in return.

"Once again, the library is sort of caught in the middle," he remarked. "But all parties agree that finding a way to increase librarian salaries would be a good thing and a fair thing. At the moment there is a difference in terms of what the quid pro quo should be."

The unions representing librarians in the city's three library systems have organized a string of protests over the past 18 months to draw attention to their salary plight. Librarians, who must have a master's degree in library science, earn a starting salary of $31,296 and top out at $54,552. The current average salary among NYPL librarians is $39,000.

The city library systems' recruitment difficulties have grown acute in recent years, with very high turnover and chronic shortages in branch libraries in the poorest neighborhoods. According to NYPL officials, 50% of its librarians quit within three years, a quarter of the librarians hired in the last year have already departed, and 22% of its branches do not have a children's librarian.

Union officials and library management agree that the staffing shortages stem directly from the fact that librarians can earn substantially more elsewhere. The city has been the stumbling block. The three systems, while autonomously managed, are largely dependent on city funds. After a quiet effort to convince the city to boost salaries failed, library executives began speaking out publicly about the issue a year ago.

In their latest push in May, the chief executives of the three systems called on the city to set aside $10 million in its new budget to pay for a 15 percent catch-up raise. In testimony before a City Council budget hearing, NYPL President Paul LeClerc said increasing librarian salaries was the system's top funding priority. He called the rapidly growing number of library vacancies due to non-competitive salaries "a grave threat" to the NYPL's recent gains in services.

When the city once again spurned the libraries' pleas, Mr. LeClerc took matters into his own hands, coming up with money from the NYPL's own budget to support a 15 percent wage boost. Mr. Zavelle noted that the library had been given the green light by city officials to raise librarian wages using its own funds as long as it sought appropriate productivity gains in return.

Library officials requested a formal labor-management meeting with DC 37 on July 24. The library made an oral presentation of its proposal, whose centerpiece was an immediate 15% pay increase for all librarians currently in the system.

Union officials said that they assumed at the time that the library also intended to raise the salary schedule-both starting salaries and promotional increases-by 15 percent. Mr. Zavelle said that the library had no such plans because changes in the salary scale had to be negotiated between the union and the city in collective bargaining.

Giving librarians in NYPL's prestigious Research Library additional sweeteners, library officials said that all incumbents would be immediately promoted to the next salary grade, and that all future recruits would enter at the second pay grade earning a starting salary of $34,055. In the branch libraries, new recruits would be promoted to the next pay grade after nine months.

In return, library management asked the union for modest concessions. It requested the right to place Senior Librarians rather than having to advertise open positions. It also sought to remove the top tier of unionized librarians in the Research Library from the bargaining unit.

The NYPL planned to pay for the wage increase by making a substantial cut to its book budget and by trimming 60 t0 80 funded librarian positions by attrition over and above current vacancies. The NYPL which covers Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, was in a stronger position to come up with its own funding that the Queens and Brooklyn library systems, given its greater capacity to attract support from private donors.

Union officials said that they accepted the deal at the table. Mr. Zavelle said that the union was "favorably disposed" to the offer and indicated to the library that the remaining issues could be sorted out. He insisted, however, that there was never a formal agreement.

The two sides scheduled a second meeting for Aug. 10 to sign a written Memorandum of Understanding. Local 1930 set up a membership meeting for later that evening to ratify the agreement.

But events took a sharp turn in the interim. At the second meeting, library officials informed the union that they were rescinding their earlier wage offer because the city had objected to it. Mr. Zavelle said that city officials did not consider the staffing cuts to be a "tangible" productivity increase and worried that service would suffer as a result.

The library presented a revised offer that had many of the same features as the old one, but with a few crucial differences. The deal killer, said Mr. Markey, was the library's demand that librarians work 37.5 hours a week, up from 35. In the second proposal, the permanent salary schedule would rise by 7.14 percent while all incumbents would see their salaries rise by 15 percent. Mr. Markey noted that the 7.14 percent increase was not a real raise because it represented the exact value of the longer hours. He also complained that the additional pay for incumbents would be absorbed when they received their next promotional increase.

The union immediately rejected the new offer. At the union meeting, 200 members unanimously turned it down in a non-binding vote.

Mr. Zavelle said that the city insisted on extending the workweek, but in return offered to pick up the tab for the additional pay increase for incumbents. A city official explained that a reduction in agency staff did not count as a productivity increase. He said that the city was seeking solid, quantifiable productivity.

Mr. Zavelle said that the library had not expected the union to embrace the new offer given how "emotional" and "difficult" the issue of longer hours is. DC 37, he noted, was wary that the city would use a longer workweek for librarians as a wedge issue in its wider contract talks with the city.

Mr. Markey lambasted the library management for its about-face. "The fact is you can't say you are going to do something on you own, and now, all of a sudden, say the city says you can't do it," he remarked. "The city's position has been consistent all along."

Mr. Zavelle contended that the library had not approached the city before the first meeting because it was afraid that the city might defer discussions until after the current round of city-wide bargaining concluded. Given the urgency of the situation, he said, library officials believed that it made sense to involve the union first.

Some observers speculate that the two other library systems, concerned that the NYPL pay package would put them at a competitive disadvantage, worked to scuttle the deal.

A spokesman for the Queens Borough Public Library denied that the Queens system complained to the city. "It's a great thing for librarians to get their salaries," said the spokesman, Joseph Catrambone, Jr. "We aren't going to move against them."

A spokeswoman from the Brooklyn Public Library did not return a call seeking comment.