uc-aft unit 17 negotiations

The Berkeley Unit 17 labor-management meeting took place on Thursday,
October 25.

Rita Evans, Harrison Dekker and Jesse Silva spoke for the librarians
at the campus; UC-AFT also was represented by Karen Sawislak (UC-AFT
Executive Director), Alan Karras (UC-AFT Vice-President and UCB
Grievance Steward) and Michelle Squitieri, the UC-AFT Field
Representative for UCB.

The Berkeley representatives were Susan Wong, Director of Human
Resources for the UCB Library, Elizabeth Leavitt of the UCB Academic
Personnel Office, Debra Harrington, UCB Labor Relations Manager. UCOP
was represented by Deanna Dudley, the Unit 17 Chief Negotiator.

Deanna Dudley, the UCOP Negotiator for Unit 17, explained that UCOP has
requested this series of meetings at each campus to learn about the professional
concerns of librarians. She stated that the University wants to hear from the unit
about their issues --and that she personally is looking to be educated about
the work that librarians do for UC.

Susan Wong began the meeting by observing that there are tremendous
changes happening in libraries and the profession of librarianship.
New skills are needed to meet these challenges. The Berkeley library
has embarked on a year-long dialogue called the "New Directions"
initiatives -- the library is bringing in external experts in global
research libraries to give talks and hold workshops that are meant to
spark input and new ideas about the library of the future. All
library management and librarians are being encouraged to collaborate
in this project.

In terms of staffing, Wong noted that the headcount of Unit 17
librarians at UCB has stayed stable for many years. Traditionally,
Berkeley librarians have stayed on for long careers. Now, due to
retirements and some turnover, the Berkeley libraries are hiring
constantly -- she noted that for the last 1-2 years, she has always
been in the midst of 8-10 searches for librarians. To attract the
best candidate, the library needs to be competitive in the salaries it
can offer -- it is especially difficult to attract top librarians in
particular specialized areas. In addition, to deal with retention
issues, the library wants to be able to be more flexible and
time-sensitive in its ability to make counter-offers.

Next, a librarian explained the unique structure of the UCB library system.
There are at least 30 separate libraries on campus.
Doe/Moffitt/Bancroft and subject speciality libraries (such as
Education/Psychology) are under the University Librarian and are
funded through the Library budget. Affiliated libraries are
organizationally tied to Colleges and Schools, are headed by Deans,
and have separate funding streams. Affiliated libraries handle all of
their own functions, while the other libraries share centralized
technical services.

The first part of the discussion briefly focused on workload, as one
of the librarians explained how he found on his first day of work that
he had been assigned responsibilities for a range of subject areas
that were not part of the description for the job he accepted.
Another was promoted to the position held by her supervisor upon his
retirement -- and her previous job has never again been filled.

The Unit 17 librarians then initiated a discussion that largely
focused on the issues of salary, support for professional activities,
and the practice of appointing librarians in non-librarian titles (in
order to increase their pay).

In general, Berkeley librarians greatly enjoy their work, and the
first-rate academic opportunities available to them. Nonetheless,
about half the librarians at the campus with 5-10 years of experience
say that they are thinking about looking for work elsewhere -- and the
reason is that UC salaries do not come close to matching the
cost-of-living. This is especially true for early-career librarians.

Even though UCB does not hire at the Assistant Librarian level
(because, as management acknowledged, the salaries at this level
simply are too low), other public libraries in the area pay far more
to early-career librarians. For example, the San Francisco Public
Library pays $56,000 to librarians straight out of school and salaries
at CSUs are at similar levels.

In answer to a management observation that, in general, people leave
jobs more frequently these days, the librarians pointed out that there
would be far fewer people thinking about exits from UC if a long
career at UC could be rewarded like a long library career at the CSUs.
They also made the point that Berkeley long has recognized that it
needs to pay its faculty well to attract the best faculty -- so why
hasn't the University recognized that it needs to pay well to attract
(and keep) the best librarians?

The librarians observed that they are expected to be professionally
active on a national or even international level in their areas of
expertise -- yet they are not given the financial support to carry out
these activities. There are no sabbaticals. Funding for travel to
professional conferences is very uneven and mostly inadequate. And
salaries are not sufficient for librarians to absorb costs out of
their own pockets. Finally, it is insulting when librarians are not
listed as course instructors and are not allowed to serve as the PIs
of their own projects -- two situations that occur with some frequency
at UCB.

Finally, a major part of the discussion turned on the question of
out-of-unit classifications. It was noted that 10-15 librarians at
the CDL are in the programmer/ analyst series -- but that when UCB
librarians are "on-loan" to consult with that project, they stay in
Unit 17.

The librarians made the point that they want to be recognized and
supported as members of their profession -- and that to remove
librarians from the Professional Library series solely for the purpose
of paying them higher salaries devalues the profession and Unit 17's
contributions to the University. The real answer is to fix the
librarian salary scale so all academic librarians can be recognized
adequately for their contributions.

In answer to management comments about the need for "flexibility" in
hiring, recruitment, and retention, the librarians agreed that UC
would need to do more to attract and keep librarians with cutting-edge
skills, since there are a lot of new employment opportunities in the
private sector for librarians. But they noted that people always come
to the UCs because they are academics: they want to do research, to
teach, and to work with top faculty and students. It will harm the
integrity of the academic track if UC pushes for a system where
librarians with especially marketable skills could get jumps in salary
that boost them past colleagues who have worked for years to build
their record of achievement as academics.

Finally, it was noted that at UCB, librarians are not able to
communicate in a non-adversarial way with the upper management of the
Library and there is some sense that the UCB libraries maintain very
much of a top-down culture. The librarians expressed their
disappointment that no one from the high levels of management had
attended the L-M meeting. All agreed that more communication within the
organization at all levels is necessary.

This was a very thoughtful give and take. In general, Berkeley has
been a campus where the union has been involved in productive
discussions with labor relations. Managers freely shared their
thoughts in the session -- and often agreed with points raised by the
librarians. It is clear that both sides (at least at UCB) see
problems with the salary structure for the unit.

Special thanks to Harrison, Jesse, and Rita for so ably representing the
Berkeley librarians.

Unfortunately, the UCR labor-management meeting scheduled for Wed. Oct. 24
was cancelled at the last minute due to UCR Labor Relation's mistaken belief
that the campus would be closed that day due to fires in the area. We are working
on rescheduling the UCR meeting in November.

The next local labor-management meeting are:

UCSD -- Friday, November 2
UCLA -- Wednesday, November 7

Karen Sawislak
UC-AFT Executive Director