OVERVIEW
CUPE library workers are predominantly employed in public, school, and post-secondary libraries in every province across the country. They make libraries spaces that are open, welcoming, and accessible to everyone. They provide vital services to promote literacy and combat mis- and disinformation. They connect people to countless resources and to one another. They design and deliver a broad range of services such as family story time, peer tutor writing programs, and digital scholarship services. They answer innumerable questions about anything and everything. And they support learning, research, employment, creativity, and social engagement to help empower people.
ISSUES
Workplace violence and harassment
Workplace violence and harassment are a significant health and safety issue in libraries, particularly public and school libraries. CUPE members are experiencing growing levels of violence and harassment in their workplaces, sometimes with devastating consequences. They are also affected from witnessing and intervening in violent incidents involving patron-on-patron or student-on-student violence. Workers in public libraries also face high rates of patron-involved drug use and overdoses, as the housing, mental health, addiction, and affordability crises intersect in library spaces.
Among public libraries, employers are implementing a variety of measures to help address workplace violence and harassment, including security guards, staff training, social workers, peer support programs, and changes to building layouts. Locals are also bargaining stronger health and safety provisions into their collective agreements to help prevent incidents and mitigate the serious consequences of experiencing or witnessing violence and harassment while on the job. Despite these measures, the rates of violence, harassment, and drug overdoses in some library systems continue to climb. More solutions are needed, including some that fall outside the scope of libraries and library work, such as increased funding and staffing for community social services, mental health supports, and public housing.
Within the public education system, staff shortages and chronic underfunding have resulted in high levels of violence and have left workers with inadequate supports and feeling burned out. Education workers, including school library workers, face barriers to reporting violence, including a lack of support from management, fear of reprisals and judgement of their professional abilities. Workers are caught between a student’s right to an education and their right to a safe and healthy workplace. Education workers are calling on their provincial governments to implement properly funded plans for concrete action to address violence in schools to help make them safe for everyone.
Workload and burnout
Library workers are feeling the negative effects of chronic underfunding and budget cuts. Inadequate funding has resulted in staffing shortages, recruitment and retention issues, job cuts, lost hours, and library closures. Long-standing job vacancies are going unfilled by employers, leading to skeletal staffing levels, cuts to services, and the inability of staff to access collective agreement provisions when they want to, such as vacation time. As noted above, members are also facing unprecedented levels of workplace violence, harassment, and overdoses within their workplaces. Combined, these issues are having a serious impact on members’ physical and psychological health, safety, and well-being.
Funding, library closures, and job cuts
Libraries and library workers across the country are feeling the squeeze from stagnant library funding and funding cuts.
Provincial funding for public libraries has long been frozen in many provinces. As a result, we are seeing library systems cut hours, services, and jobs to reduce costs. Some libraries also have hours of operation that are unstaffed, so they can increase access to resources without adding costs. Stagnant funding and funding cuts also prohibit libraries from implementing measures that could help to prevent violence and harassment, increasing the risk of incidents in the workplace. The underfunding of public libraries is compounded by the chronic underfunding of community social services, mental health supports, and public housing. Libraries are often the only place for people to go who have nowhere else to. Marginalized and street-involved individuals turn to libraries for support they need but are unable to access elsewhere in the community. We cannot talk about the need to increase library funding without simultaneously talking about the need for governments to increase investments in addiction, mental health, and housing services, as well.
In the education sector, inadequate funding is resulting in the closure of school libraries and the elimination of library worker jobs. Some schools have converted their libraries to classroom spaces to accommodate growth in the student population when it has outgrown its existing footprint. Books have been moved to different locations throughout the school. School library workers in New Brunswick, British Columbia, and Alberta are experiencing the effects. Closing libraries and cutting library workers’ jobs grossly underestimates the role of libraries and library workers in promoting literacy, numeracy, creativity, and vibrant learning environments. In other cases, school library workers struggle to obtain adequate funding to purchase new books and resources that meet students’ changing needs and interests. Every school should have a library. It should be well-funded and resourced and have full-time library staff. School-aged kids and their families depend on it.
Provincial governments have long failed to increase funding for the post-secondary education sector to help colleges and universities keep up with rising costs. Compounding this problem is the federal government’s new caps on the number of international students permitted to study in Canada. In some provinces, such as Ontario, international students provide more funding to colleges and universities than the government does. Colleges and universities are cutting programs and jobs, as a result. Budget cuts also mean academic libraries cannot increase staffing to support new services and programs. They diminish libraries’ purchasing power, which impacts staff’s ability to build and maintain academic resources. They also hamper a library’s ability to purchase new technology that students rely on, such as laptops. Not all students have access to the technology they need to pursue their post-secondary studies, and they rely on the library to help fill that gap. When academic libraries are not adequately funded, it negatively impacts library workers’ ability to nurture a cutting-edge learning and research environment for faculty, staff, and students.
BARGAINING
CUPE library locals made noticeable gains at the bargaining table over the past two years but also experienced difficult rounds of negotiations and demands for concessions. Key bargaining issues include wages, improvements for part-time and auxiliary workers, benefits, health and safety, and Sunday hours.
Locals in British Columbia made the strongest wage gains of 3 to 4.5% per year of the term of their contracts. This is largely due to coordinated efforts across the province to ensure that each municipal and library local achieved at least as much as the pattern set by other CUPE locals that bargained before them. In addition to strong general wage increases, locals in British Columbia negotiated inflationary support and retention payments. Although these payments are intended to help offset the high cost of living felt across the country, they are one-time lump sum payments that are not rolled into wages on a year-over-year basis.
Improvements for part-time and auxiliary workers were also negotiated by CUPE locals. Language improvements for part-time and auxiliary staff have helped to reduce the precarious nature of some job classifications within some locals. This has been a major win in locals where precarity was particularly insidious. Other locals successfully negotiated access to benefits or benefits improvements for part-time workers. And some prioritized improving compensation for the lowest wage workers, especially those who were only earning the minimum wage.
Locals also bargained a variety of improvements to benefits and paid leaves. Many locals increased their mental health coverage and expanded the scope of their coverage to include a broader range of practitioners, such as counsellors and social workers. The Toronto Public Library Workers Union negotiated a 3-day paid post-violent incident leave and doubled their gender affirming care, domestic and sexual violence leave times. Nearly all locals negotiated the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a paid day off.
Additional successes include tables that successfully negotiated new or improved no working alone language and new language preventing employers from adopting service models that provide for staffless libraries.
Changes to Sunday hours and health and safety improvements are priority issues where locals obtained mixed results. Some locals fought for and won new protections around Sunday shifts in relation to both hours of work and maintaining Sunday premiums. Other locals really struggled with this issue. For some, negotiations resulted in the introduction of new Sunday hours, the regularization of Sunday hours, and/or the loss of Sunday premiums. When it comes to health and safety, some locals that tabled proposals on the prevention of workplace violence and harassment made small, but important gains during bargaining. Others had no success and even faced employers who were hostile towards the measures they proposed. These locals have notified employers they are not giving up and are already preparing to bring the proposals back when their contracts expire.
CAMPAIGNS
CUPE locals launched a variety of successful campaigns over the past 2 years. Members of CUPE 70-05, who work at the Lethbridge Public Library in Alberta, launched a campaign calling for increased library funding. Supporters sent messages to the Premier, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and Members of the Legislative Assembly. Funding for the Lethbridge Public Library has not kept up with the city’s population growth. More people use the public library, but the system still receives funding based on the city’s 2019 population level.
Members of CUPE 2669, who work at the Saskatoon Public Library in Saskatchewan fought hard at the bargaining table for new health and safety language focused on the prevention of workplace violence and harassment. To support their efforts, the local launched a billboard campaign throughout the city calling on residents to support Saskatoon Public Library Workers and demanding an end to the normalization of workplace violence.
Members of CUPE 1833, who work at the Peterborough Public Library in Ontario, were facing the elimination of 3 full-time librarians following the city’s demand for $120,000 in budget cuts. Peterborough residents organized a petition calling for a stop to the job cuts, and the local worked with CUPE Ontario to organize a letter writing campaign to the library CEO, the board, the mayor and council. The grassroots advocacy group Our Future Peterborough released an open letter to Peterborough city council and the library board calling for a reversal to the cuts. It was signed by more than 100 celebrated writers, artists, educators, and performers, including Neil Young, Margaret Atwood, Madeleine Thien, Sarah Harmer, and Lois Lowry. Following weeks of backlash, the city announced it was pausing the job cuts while it considered other ways to meet its budget target. The librarians’ jobs are secure for now, and city management is talking more openly with the local, placing them on a path towards a longer-term resolution.