librarypunk - 125 - FVRL and WPEA Union

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

This week we’re joined by Derya of the WPEA to talk about the Fort Vancouver Regional Library and the library staff represented by the union fighting for a living wage. Check the notes to see how you can help support them!   https://nwlaborpress.org/2024/03/low-paid-librarians-fed-up-in-vancouver/  https://www.thestand.org/2024/02/take-action-raises-for-sw-washington-librarians-overdue/  (article #1) FVRL Board: Pay your library workers livable wages! (thestand.org)   (article #2-following the action)   Media mentioned Joe Clement did this piece on the Old Mole Radio Variety Hour, and it contains research resources as well as public testimony audio captured from Nerissa, Carmen, Abbie, and Derya from the latest Board meeting on March 18. https://truthout.org/articles/public-private-partnerships-are-quietly-hollowing-out-our-public-libraries/ https://www.lsslibraries.com/ https://twitter.com/wylie_alan  FVRL Board Meeting 2/20/2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_r6NqOlEi0  Old Mole Variety Hour on libraries upcoming April 8 https://kboo.fm/media/120834-old-mole-variety-hour-april-8-2024  Contact the FVRL Board The problem and the solution are simple: Fort Vancouver Regional Library workers are grossly underpaid, and they must be paid a living wage.    We are asking the community at large to speak up for libraries by telling the FVRL Board to approve the allocation of funds to ensure the dignity of a living wage for all FVRL workers.  Sign petition https://www.change.org/p/it-s-time-fvrlibraries-pay-your-staff-a-living-wage?original_footer_petition_id=34850778&algorithm=promoted&grid_position=5&pt=AVBldGl0aW9uABhQQQIAAAAAZbwMe%2FqWz6hhNDJhOWQwNw%3D%3D  Email board of trustees of FVRL [e-mail] Attend meetings through FVRL website fvrl.org/board/trustees  Trustees phone contact:  360-906-5011  More information Flyer https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GQRWWVlrgZURJXOtSagHEcVoE0H-5j6f/view?usp=sharing Infographic https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MO9qZroV4NVwWnz7MTQfY4ElBg5nnzX-/view?usp=sharing   Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/zzEpV9QEAG 

I'm Justin, I'm a Skullcom library, and my pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library, and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I'm a music library director, and my pronouns are he, him. And we have a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself? Hello, everybody. Yes, I'm Daria Ruggles, and you can use she or they. Welcome. The thays are outnumbering me again. Yeah. I believe I got a round of applause already. Thank you.

No, absolutely. No. So I believe you are familiar with Joe Clement, who does the radio show, the Old Mo Radio Variety Hour. And it's pretty funny that we're getting this out right now because Joe just gave me a note like last week. It was like, you know, you should have more library staff on to talk about staff issues. And we're releasing two episodes in a row that'll be doing that. Well, it is going to be library week. And just to be clear, Justin, you probably know this, but I worked at the library for 13 years. but I am now a union organizer.

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Extremely pro-union podcast. Oh, yeah. Yeah, as I was saying when we were talking about the background, part of this show is really giving library workers

a something to focus on in terms of class consciousness, organizing effectiveness, different methods of organizing, different issues in workplaces, negotiation. I think probably one of the highs of the podcast so far was someone was like, finally quit my job. Thanks, Library Punk.

Because they were just like, you know, I needed to take care of myself. But that breaks my heart, Justin, you know, because I mean, we're losing the brain drain of these incredibly dedicated people who are being taken advantage of, you know, especially in direct contrast to admin. It really breaks my heart because for myself, I mean, 12 years of trying to create empowering programs for my community was an extremely disempowering thing for me to do. And that's just wrong. I mean, obviously, you know, so I, it, it, and I had to leave, you know, because of that. So, and I know so many librarians that left, and, and I understand that this particular library, FBRL, is, is known as the library you leave. You get your chops up and you do what you need to do so that you

can move on to better things. And when I first worked there, there was so much hope, because we had this gorgeous building in downtown, 83,000 square feet, gold, lead certified gold, almost platinum. And, you know, we had all of these amazing people with vision. They wanted to create like great places for small businesses, for non-profit resources, you know, bees and seed library and a garden on the roof and, you know, all of these wonderfully community-oriented, empowering programs and stand for things that libraries generally stand for. And it has been bled out so that we are now at the place where our workers, our frontline people that are doing everything that make the library a library instead of just a warehouse of books that are there with that

smile and that dedication. They're trying not to live in their cars, you know, working full time. So this is what we're dealing with right now. And my whole point as, as, as, a union organizing specialist is I believe that our community in general loves their libraries. And I don't think that they're in any recognition of the fact that the people that they love that are the library for them are struggling this much, that are they that close to living and being part of the homeless population. And what I really want to do is wake those people up and get them to show up in support of the library workers and to do that by signing a petition that we started. I also worked with some wonderful people and some staff to get for the first time ever

a proclamation honoring library workers with the city of Vancouver and the mayor. Interesting, ironically, and very interestingly, I went right before a proclamation for the homeless that was December 21st was going to be homeless recognition day in recognition of nine people that died on the streets in Vancouver. You know, and it's like that nexus of, hey folks, you know, this new director is making nearly $200,000, some, you know, person who, by the way, you know, came from Library System and Services and was the director there. And, you know, and here we have these, the people that are doing the work who years ago, I have to say, years ago we had steps. They took away our steps. And the steps were those regular incremental raises, which when I got

there, they had already gotten rid of him and everybody's talking about him. And actually, the president of this union, the former president of this union, she said, I'll die on that hill. And she got the steps back. Well, we are so far behind that what was once at least a livable job, you know, maybe 15 years ago, now people are making maybe nine cents over minimum wage. That's the reality. Over the years, I have watched many talented staff members leave our libraries due to the lack of pay here. This is the second year I've personally seen FBR libraries have to raise their entry-level wages just to keep up with the minimum wage of the state. The work we do here requires empathy, skill, and professionalism that goes above and beyond a minimum wage.

Our bargaining team currently faces opposition from the admin team here at FDR Libraries in its effort to bargain a living wage. We need you to make this happen. Yeah, I was talking to, so one of my, the students I supervise who works in my library is considering getting another master's degree and maybe going to library school. And I told her, I was like, you know, depending on like your professional goals or what you're interested in, like some realities is that like even though no librarians really get paid well, really one of the only places where you have any chance of like advancing in your career in any meaningful way is an academic librarianship because there's more of that built in because so much of that has gotten taken out of public library work. Yep. Which is bad. Yeah.

And giving giving that advice too is something of a controversial. position between librarians that we talk about among each other, which is, you know, when someone comes up to us and says, I want to be a librarian, I want to do what you do, which is like a very high form of compliment, what do you say to them? Do you say, well, here's the reality, here's various ways you can go about it. Library school is probably going to be expensive. So, you know, I always feel like more information is always better. Yeah. But I think the disagreement between most people is how do you convey that information? And I don't really know if, you know, maybe some people disagree with the way we convey it on this show. But I don't know any other way except to say,

like, look, there's some bad things, but I also love my job. I think it's pretty cool the stuff I get to do. And I think being a librarian is pretty cool because you don't have to necessarily specialize too much. So if you have a broad base of interests, you might just be, it doesn't matter where you're working in the library, you'll just stumble across stuff because libraries are like that. You'll just one day find yourself, oh, I was standing here 30 minutes reading a book about frogs. And it's like, oh, well, I happened. Yeah, it didn't dissuade her from maybe going into public librarianship because she also would be interested in, like, doing, like, children's librarianship. And I was like, great. University of Illinois is a great place if you want to pay that kind of tuition.

There are probably other great programs. But, like, yeah, no, like, it's a real issue the way that, like, people say they love their librarians, but so much when they're like, oh, I love the library, even in an academic library, like, I have heard stories of like when faculty, like, learn that their favorite journal is getting cut because of the budget. And they go, well, why do we need all these librarians? Just get rid of them. I want my journal. I don't care about these people. I want my stuff. Right. So it's like sometimes I worry that like, they try to like, here's the people behind this. Like, sometimes I worry that that backfires. in places. So I'm glad to hear the community being like, no, we like our librarians. Like, hopefully

that works. Because in academic libraries, it backfires a lot. And one of the, one of the libraries I previously worked for, when I first got there, failed a levy. And then when I was still in public services, or actually, I think it was after I transitioned IT passed a levy. And they were, part of how they passed the levy was by pushing the line that every employee across the line would get a 3% raise. we need this levy to be able to continue to pay our employees a decent living wage, right? Which was kind of funny because they, a lot of them weren't getting paid a living wage. But, but, and that's why the community responded so strongly the second time around like four or five years later was because they did really love their public library. Many of them email like said, this is why I'm voting yes for the library because I want these people, I want my library to be a strong place.

So I think that, dear, yeah, that's a really good angle to be taking, especially, you know, we're both in Washington State. I hope that holds true across, you know, multiple places. But yeah, I think that sucks that that happens in Jay and academic libraries. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if there is a divide, if there is a line, that line is not materials and workers. That line, am I allowed to curse? Oh, yes. That fucking line is the line between admin that are overpaid and everything else.

If you want to draw a line in the sand, folks, yeah, you should have your journals, you should have your music, you should have all of your materials. And hey, maybe you don't have to pay these admin people ridiculous high six figures. Yeah, one thing I like about my university in a lot of ways is it's very working class. It's a public university. you get the vibe because I've interviewed all over the country, right? So I've gone to different places. I'm from the south. So I've interviewed up in Boston for jobs way in the past and felt very out of place

at certain institutions. And when I interviewed at my current job, I interviewed twice because they interviewed for two different jobs. I was like, yeah, I get it. Because the population's all working class, the faculty who are from here all working class. And unfortunately, that also means that in some ways, like there's a big way to compression issue because the very top is paid a reasonable amount, but they still need to maintain this hierarchy of pay, which means that the compression pushes down further and further

to the point where all of our LA ranks were grossly underpaid for a long time. They finally got it fixed. But one of the things, like Jay was saying, it's easy to move up in ranks if you change jobs. Yeah. If you stay in the same job, you are disincentivized because your pay will not keep up with the new hires. And so that's how you get this terrible pay compression. Or you have to like your rank can change. Like if there's like library one, librarian two, that kind of right. How did they fix it? So what the university did is there was a push to put all salaries in the university above the 25th percentile. So if anyone who's getting paid below the lowest 25 percent, their wages would get adjusted over like three years until it was.

at least at minimum nationally in the top three core tiles of pay. So that became interesting for librarians because a lot of our librarians are paid a good wage but not actually like percentage wise very high because it's very cheap to live here for one reason. So people don't really mind that much. But every time my pay has been adjusted, it's gone up, you know, quite a bit because they're comparing it to national salaries. But the biggest changes were at the very bottom where people were getting paid like $25,000

in a year, jumped up to like 33, 35, 36, you know, over a couple years because that was just where the underpaying was worst. So how did they, I mean, the process was what? Was it negotiations in a contract? How did they, what was the mechanism? It was at the direction of the university president. Many of the financial decisions are centralized at the university president, which has been a problem in some ways, but it was mostly just to make it a competitive place to hire. And so, being able to say, hey, we've, we've fixed all these wage issues. It looks pretty good. It's a sensible thing to do when you're, when you're trying to invest in the long term. Because it's, our, our university is made up of multiple legacy universities that merge together. So our university

itself is only like 10 years old, nine years old. So you want this new university to like keep going, you kind of have to invest in it. So yes, I have, I have, I am a member of like the Texas State employees union, that's more of a business. It's not a business union. It's more of an industrial model. They mostly do advocacy at the state level to try and pay fixed because of those issues, because public employees in Texas get regular COLA adjustments, except for academic work workers. We are not part of that pay scale. So the pay stagnated all across the state for very long time, and that was why some of our pay rates were so abysmal. I've tried, you know, trying to figure out like what what union could actually represent here.

You know, maybe the AFT might be an interesting group to try and bring in. Very interestingly because of some free speech. You remember where free speech was like a big deal? Before we lost it, you mean? Yeah. Well, when it was like Republican governor's kind of big thing, what happened was every public university in Texas outside of a building became a free speech zone, which meant, finally, they couldn't stop the unions from showing up and recruiting outside of the library. So that was when I first joined the TSEU, but any union could do this.

So we could start tabling unions all across campus for the AFT if we wanted to, and they can't do anything about it. They have to let us on. So it has been very interesting. That is interesting, Justin. I have to tell you, I'm engaged in this community that I live in any way. I actually serve as an appointed commissioner for the Transportation and Mobility Commission, and I was very engaged in keeping a fucking shit whole. Sorry, can't help it since you said I can curse. I've said worse. There was a proposed oil terminal.

I mean, it's so bad. That's a whole other discussion. But anyway, we worked along with, I worked with teachers and nurses and kids and the tribes and everything. We worked five fucking years to keep those to Soros Savage was their name, oil terminal, out of here. And instead we have this gorgeous waterfront. But one of the things, one of my pals who was also a neighborhood leader, and I heard him speak truth to power. And we became friends because he spoke to the port commissioners.

And he goes, yeah, you know, you bring this in. You get the profit. We get the poison. No. And I was like, who is this guy? So we're now friends. And he is now a port commissioner. Yay.

So, yeah, we need that applause again, man. So, yeah. So you, Eric Lebrant. Lebrant, our poor commissioner, thank you very much. So my point is, well, now we're really developing that. And one of the things that was really important to me was, and Joe Clement and Desire Heligers, who is a professor at Washington State University, who created many wonderful things, including the collective for social environmental justice, which I worked with her. We discussed the importance of these public places. In order to do things like protest, we'll bring libraries or

or whatever you bring organizing in. And so one of the things that I talked to Eric LeBrand about was the importance of keeping these public places public because a lot of people don't realize that you go to places that seem like their parks or public places, but they're actually institutional, meaning they're owned by these. And they can arrest you for whatever they feel like arresting for trespassing or whatever it is. So I'm very happy to hear and a little surprise that it happened in Texas, Justin, but it's encouraging to hear that they created this sanctuary for being able to protest and make it a public place and continue to make it public so that we can stand up for things like freedom.

It was definitely an unattended side of fact because as you know, the Texas legislature meets in Austin, which is like the most liberal city in the state and they hate the fact that they have to be in Austin for a second longer than they want to be. So they think this is what every campus and city is like. So they're like, we need to make sure there's lots of room for conservative free speech. And then, of course, most of Texas is actually pretty conservative. So you just open it up for people to, you know, you've got like the Baptist student organization with their weird theological questions that I used to take a picture of and post to my Bible study group and go, can anyone make any sense of this. And that was always fun. But it also means that any union can table. And that also means, you know, like, we really have had nothing but kind of good things from it.

There have been pro-Palestinian protests on campus. And people, I mean, I remember when the IWW was still a little active here when I, when I moved here, I remember I was in a protest with the IWW. And we were protesting children who had been killed at the border. And we just kind of took it around a shopping mall. We made this big, like, a thing that we would carry, kind of like the Ark of the Covenant thing and just had pictures on the sides. It was decorated. It was very nice tribute. and we walked it through like a shopping mall just chanting and people were like just taking pictures to like we've never seen a protest down here. You know, people just don't get like actively politically engaged in rural communities, right? Not from a rural place, so I understand this. But yeah, it's the people are out there.

You just got to find them. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say that like this is something I've been talking about. So there's a local Black Rose chapter here in Boston that I'm involved with, an anarchist organization. And we're trying to build like a little labor contingency within it. And one thing that we talk about so much is that like within, like not just within Boston,

but like one of the unique things about like syndicalism and like labor organizing is that like it is one of the ways that you can bring people together that you can do some like coalition building within an organization of people from. different backgrounds, even different, like, political beliefs. Like, when I was in the AAP at my previous job, like, there were people in that union whose politics I didn't agree with. And, like, I don't love that, but, like, it's an interesting way of, like, when you, when people start realizing they have some kind of common ground and then you can just radicalize them. But, like, it's an interesting, like, labor organizing is one of the places, like, one of the sites of organizing of political action. that brings people together that might otherwise be polarized against each other. Oh, that's a great point. First of all, that is the point of union. I mean, economic justice is something

that completely precludes, supersedes, does not have anything to do with politics. You can be left, right, center, extreme on either side. But if you care about economic justice, we can all stand together for solidarity. So yeah. And I wanted to say, Justin, the one thing that I love about what you said was that what you did with something very visual. Like, one of the things that I think about is how, because there's such a cacophony, there's such a, there's such a reappropriation of things like, oh, I don't know, the American flag. I mean, we don't, we don't have that place of purple, so to speak. I can't even believe right now. I cannot believe, and I'm not even looking at things. My love looks at things, and he can tell me. But I, I don't, I can't fathom that that insane con man is even being considered. So we, we are in a place like, and I know to a certain degree in

forgive me if I seem extreme that we live in a corporate fascist state. Come on, you know, we do. Yeah. So we're planning for the remnants of this thing called democracy that we all have to step up for and continue to struggle. But the perennialness of that struggle is, is a little bit deflating. But we cannot be deflated or defeated by that because that's always that that's a mechanism that they use in order to divide us and make us feel discouraged. Remember that some, that horrible woman, I can't think of her name, but extreme Republican. She said something like, you know, you know, resistance is futile because they, you know, because they have all of the money in there, and they're trying to, you know, those people have names and addresses.

But see, I don't, and the thing is, I don't, it's, it's such a, I believe in free speech for everyone. You know, the whole ACLU thing, you know, sometimes they'll be, they're like, you know, you're going to what, you're going to represent that Nazi. But, you know, the idea that, that free speech really is for everyone and the fact that they created that the ground work there for the conservatives to be able to speak up in Austin, and then the outcome that was not intuitive to them was that everyone gets to and it ends up being more of the progressive people. So I think being able to create that opportunity to have civility again, it is absolutely the success of propaganda to me that we're even in this state. It shouldn't be this way.

we should be able to have reasonable conversations, as you said, Jay, about things that we all agree upon, like economic justice. Who thinks it's okay for people to live on the streets? And why are we in the state that we are vilifying the people that have that, are you fucking kidding me? People are like, well, they want to live there. Oh, really? They want to be. Do what's wrong with that too? But if, I mean, if people do, there, there is something, you know, Jay, there is something about, like, you know, I'm, I'm proud of Vancouver because we are really addressing homelessness. we did Proposition 1 and then we did it, we did it. We voted in again. And one of the things that came out in the paper was, and this has to be looked at because it's the reality of our mammalian

community need for each other, that the guilt of leaving people behind. So we, you know, we have these transitional places that we're building here. And the people who get to go into that housing feel guilty leaving their friends behind. Because they look out for each other. They create community on the street. They're not looking at that. They need to look, they need to be listening to those stakeholders, those feet on the street people that are saying these things. Is there something else we can do? We haven't even looked at that. You know, this idea of imposing, oh, well, this is a problem. You don't have a house. We're going to create a house here for you. Well, maybe there's something else there. I don't know what it is. Why don't we ask them? What would you like to see? What would make you feel better about about being transitioned into a home and leaving your pals behind who share everything with you? Ask. Yeah, I mean, like, because there's like, there's people who like, like, who still, like, live on the rails, like, purely of choice, like, like, old school, like hobo stuff. Like, that's, like, still a thing. It's illegal, but they still do it. And it's like, that's just like sometimes it's like, it's like when people make the argument, like, well, nobody wants to be a janitor. It's like, no, some people do do. Some people want to be a janitor. There's nothing inherently wrong with that kind of work. Like, we need to make sure that, like, wherever people want to stay, that it's safe for them to do so. Exactly. And have the dignity of that.

So bringing it back to the specifics of FRL, everyone laughs whenever I do this. Everyone laughs whenever I try and bring it back. But I've got notes. I've got stuff I want to ask about. You did bring up LSNS earlier and I want to make sure people know what that is. Would you mind telling our listeners what LSNS is? I understand it's libraries, services and systems or the other way around. from what I understand, and probably Justin, you have a deeper knowledge of this, but it is, it is a service that now is considered one of the largest owners or operators of public libraries. And what they do is they take pieces of the service of libraries and they create independent contracting.

And their whole thing is that they're supposed to be partners and working with taxpayers in order to create a higher level of service. but getting rid of any fat that might be there or whatever it is. But from what I understand, the promise is false. And what they really do is they privatize our public services. They are anti-union. And there was a really good article on them on Truthout if folks are interested. So I had only found out about it when we had this new director coming in for FBRL.

And I was like, wait, what? And, you know, the interim director had never heard of it. I had never heard of it. And that's scary to me, that there's something that is now considered one of the biggest operator or owners of public libraries. First of all, that's an oxymoron right there. How can you be a owner if this is a public library? So that's what I understand that they do, Justin, and you can probably enrich that. Yeah, they're similar to Bibliotheca, who we've made fun of on the show several times.

They started out doing particular systems like Mark cataloging. They started running federal libraries within federal organizations during Reagan's privatization. And then in the 90s, they started union busting and buying public libraries while outsourcing the management of public libraries and replacing unionized workers with non-union workers. So that's kind of their history and they continue to do that. I heard something the other day that they were considered like the largest single public library or something. That's it.

I didn't realize we were as old as Reagan, though. So they've been around since the 80s? Yeah. I think a lot of these systems have kind of been like vendors in the space. and then just saw an opportunity to move into something else because, you know, there's, there's no monopoly protections or enforcement anymore. So everything regarding library services just gets bigger and bigger. Like, my library is being eaten by ex-Librous right now. It wouldn't be much of a jump for X Libris to say, you know, we could probably just run the whole thing.

Oh, my God. How insidious. Can you talk about X Libris, do you mind? because there's probably more than me that's ignorant. What's X-Labris? So X-Librous is an Israeli company. They make a integrated library system called Alma Primo. Primo is the discovery layer. They also have acquisitions tools, which is called Rialto.

Rialto. They probably have other services that I'm not aware of. They got Legato, which is for textbooks in a library loan. Yeah. Yeah. I used to work out. Did you say Ripito? Yeah, Repito.

Yeah, they're, they're, that, yeah, I used to work at an Alma library. So it's, yeah. Yeah. And I assume they probably have other services like, you know, if you had a self-checkout, that would probably be, it would probably be through them. It would at least have to use their catalog and their checkout system if you're using Alma as your integrated library system. But yeah, it's, it's replacing all these other things.

Like, we had go be for selection. We're replacing that with Rialto. We had kind of nothing. And then Leganto jumps in. They tried to sell us on their institutional repository, but I was like, this thing is it done? So why would we buy it? So, yeah, it's a lot of things like that. And it wouldn't be hard for them to say, like, yeah, we're going to have, we're going to get involved in key card openings so that people can, you know, if your library is closed on Saturday, they can swipe their key card and let them in and they can use the self-checkout.

This is kind of like the partial privatization model where, you know, oh, well, we can't be open on Saturday. So let's spend, you know, $400,000 putting in new doors and a couple self-checkout machines on Saturdays rather than having someone do a story hour for kids because that's, those are fungible things, right? One service is as good as another, right? You know, and you just make me think of this, Justin, this, the, you know, part, everybody wants to be like fiscally responsible. And you were alluding earlier, Jay, the people going, well, I don't want to lose my journal. I don't really care if you have a job. I need my journal. But, you know, it makes me think about browsing and this whole discovery process that is eliminated when we mechanize these things.

This whole, you know, and I think that it's Bradbury, you know, talked about this. You know, he, he credits the public library with his, with his ability on so many levels to have been this amazing author, writer that he isn't. is. And so much of it is the discovery process, which is eliminated by these automatic mechanisms. And I think that that's another element maybe, you know, Sadie, you were talking about that it's good to make, to make people see the connection between loving their library and loving their library worker, because that's what actually the library is is the person that's doing these things. But I think the other part is, so, you know, again, the words that people use, whether you're conservative or progressive, freedom is a big one for them, you know, with a, no, freedom of, her America. But the freedom to browse, the freedom to discover what you don't know. This is one of the things that libraries stand for. And again, it has to do with, we may have a perspective, and I don't deny my perspective. I happen to think that we're right, okay, whatever. But, you know, because we are for the greater good. And to me that, that's kind of democracy. But anyway, it is for everyone. However you wish to use this tool,

it is meant for all of us. And that's, I think that's another piece of the concern that if people understood, it has to do with your personal freedoms being ebbed away. And to tie that to labor, so my previous position, I was a discovery librarian. I did metadata and discovery strategy at my previous job. And we had Alma Primo. And it's a garbage. product. There are good discovery platforms because the whole point is like, well, what if all of the library stuff, including like digitized collections and everything, what if that could all be kind of like a binto box searched in one place? And there's some really good like free open source solutions to that that people are making where all of the code and everything is as public and

you can do it for free. But the problem with Primo is that like, so X Libris bought ProQuest and then they were then bought by Clarivate. And so X Libra's stuff works really well with ProQuest databases. And it works really badly with anything by EPSCO. To get it to work with EPSCO, you have to like jump through about 15 fucking hoops just for stuff to show up. Right. And then the algorithm about how like relevancy and precision and scope happens, because this is a commercial private product and not something that is open source, nobody knows what that algorithm is. And so like search result, it's hard to teach that because it's like I was the only person at my institution who configured this thing. And those were settings that I did not have access to because those are things you can't change. And I couldn't research how this algorithm works so that I could better tell like my catalogers like, hey, here's maybe some projects we could do to improve like recall or anything. I also wasn't trained in this. I had to teach myself on the job.

And then also their documentation is garbage. They don't keep it up to date. And also, like, tech services is usually the first place where library services get gutted. Even that gets outsourced. People are expecting this tool to be a tool of information literacy because we aren't even paid enough or given the opportunity enough to go into classrooms or in a public library to, like, offer workshops of, like, how the hell do you search a library even in this electronic system? Because, like, you know, there were people I worked with, like, you know, there are some people who, when they're students or whatever, like, they never need to use a physical library material. All of their stuff is like journals and stuff. So that like physical serendipitous browsing isn't really a necessity for the types of information that they need. So that's is a value of these systems. But like we're not taught. We like, we aren't given the opportunities like teach people how to use these things. Because like we are a lot.

allowed into the classroom once, if that, I'm the fucking library director at my institution, and I'm not given a spot during orientation. I get to tell them who I am for four fucking minutes. Four minutes. No one at my institution, including the faculty, know how to use the library because I'm never given an opportunity to teach them. And I'm also don't give in, I'm not given lib guides or like anything else to like put out like instructional materials. So like these these like discovery systems can be good, but the ones that are being bought aren't one. They're very bloated and bad. They don't even respect Oolian anymore. And then also like there's not enough labor to actually or like people aren't getting paid enough or like there's just not

enough people to actually give instruction on how do you search these. And the people who would be doing that don't even know how they work in the first place. Wow. The irony of all of this. And what do they what do they call it when it's something that a private company that, you know, there's that name that that term for we I can't tell you about it because it's it's inherent in the product secret trace box what was that saying oh black box it's probably more of an algorithm thing is it's a black box yeah when a company is like oh we'd like to tell you but we can't because it's inherent in the product if there's a name for that but the you know so they're using that excuse when I think about everything that jay just said the irony you know ebsco I worked with ebsco and pro

quest and he's saying they don't even they don't even honor bullying searches I I mean, the irony that the bastion of access and the cornerstone of democracy is getting privatized to the point where it is becoming an emblem of the very thing that is antithetic to that. And it's been happening one cut at a time, you know, the insidiousness of it. I mean, I didn't even know that all these things got bought up that Procrest and EBSCO are now part of this ex-Librous, which is part of this Israeli company that bought up. I mean, I didn't know that these things were even happening. Yeah. I mean, again, part of the mission of the podcast is mostly propaganda, but in the term of sense of getting information out there.

Propaganda is kind of a dirty word after a while. But when I had to take a lot of Soviet history, when you read about the history of propaganda, it just means to get information out to people. And if you have something you want to say, you should want to get it out to people. And so letting people know, like, these bad things are happening with our vendors. This is why libraries are bleeding money.

This is why people are in a bad situation in their jobs. So, yeah, I wish we could focus more on, like, just, like, how to write queer metadata or something. But instead, we're forced to talk about book bands and other bad stuff. We just want to talk about, like, the leather archives and, like, weird shit. We used to be able to do that. By the way, you're in Chicago. Go to Leather Archives. Yeah, Leather Archives Museum.

Mel is very cool. I want a band. I want a band and I want to be called Leather Archives. Let's make a band. We already have great music to begin with it. Audrey, nicely done, Audrey. I'll make sure she hears that. Okay. It's interesting, though, because what I want people, particularly maybe, Daria, for you to take back to people is to keep an eye on what's happening in the UK. We've had a guest on Alan Wiley. I'm going to put his Twitter in the notes because we had this discussion about libraries as good. What's happening in the UK, so in the UK, it's slightly different because libraries are a statutory right, meaning you have a legal right to a public library, in the same way in like many states' constitutions, you have a public right to a public education, right? So in the UK, they have a Libraries Act, which says you have a statutory right to a library. But since UK is like a true believer in austerity, right, they didn't realize that, no, this is what we're supposed to do to other countries. They actually did it to themselves.

So they've hollowed out all of their infrastructure, right? So what's happening with libraries is the idea of like having a public servant have a good job just doesn't seem to resonate, resonate politically with them. At this point in time, hopefully that'll change. And I think it probably will because I think the neoliberal consensus is kind of breaking apart in terms of like small things we're seeing in the Biden administration, small things we're seeing with the Tories and just other people around the world. They're realizing, oh yeah, you have to actually build stuff before you can.

can sell it off to the private sector. If you just sell off everything, there's nothing to sell to your buddies. So I think maybe there'll be a little more investment. But what happens in the UK is, since they have to have a library, it doesn't say you have to have a library professional staff. So what they do is they hand over the management of the library to a nonprofit. And the nonprofit will run it with volunteers. So all of the library workers get fired, which I always think about what I would do in that situation. And I would break everything on my way out, honestly. I know that's not very public-spirited, but I'm not going to make it easy for those scabs. And so, yeah, so then they get a bunch of people who are not library workers, have not any experience, have no incentive to show up. I mean, wages are a crap system, but it is kind of ensure that like, you know, if they stop paying me, I'm going to stop showing up. So it does sort of ensure that people do actually show up and run the services the way you want them run. Wages are an exploitative system, but they do kind of like keep people motivated.

more so than just, you know, oh, well, I'm not getting paid anyway, so I'm going to take off. Yeah. So, yes, I would keep an eye on that in terms of as a potential strategy rather than just privatization, but a non-profitization of public libraries is also a possibility. And if that strategy comes to the United States, I haven't seen it yet over here because the political climate is somewhat different, but I would, you know, keep an eye on it and see if the rhetorical shift starts to happen, what would that mean in terms of, you know, undermining the library work should be a good job, like a livable wage. It should be a good job,

just like being a firefighter should be a good job. You know, it should pay you well, it should have benefits, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. You know, the thing is we work for intrinsic as well as those extrinsic, like you got to earn a living reasons. And for them to shift that conversation that way and belie the reality of having the training that allows people again to have the freedom of discovery, the intellectual curiosity. And you have to train people to do that. You know, like in the library that I worked at, I first got there, we really well-funded. I actually ended up, I was a volunteer for the library bonds that created the building. And then I was also a volunteer and didn't know it, but I was a volunteer.

to get the vote up to fund the library, which was funding for staff, which I ended up funding my own job and didn't know it. But when we first got started, the level of professionalism of excellence in terms of access to vetted information and knowledge for people was represented by on the nonfiction floor, five floors there, it was librarians. And they showed you things. You could work there only as a senior library assistant, only next to a librarian. that would show you the process when people would have their ask and you learned all about the importance of the reference question and all of that. And then they started to, we started to lose people and then SLAs could be there by themselves, which was a big deal. I was scared. I was like, oh, I have to do this by myself. I felt the responsibility of that, you know? And and then now,

since I have left, they have our hardest working lowest paid nine cents above minimum wage, public service assistance working on the fourth floor who absolutely feel unequipped to do it because they haven't received the training that Jay in his place is unable to give so that people are empowered to empower our patrons. Yeah. One more thing I wanted to cover before we wrap up and let people know how they can support you, I did have questions about the actual ongoing negotiations. So June 2023, going to negotiations, library staff are represented by WPEA, and librarians are represented by APSCME.

Ask me. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the nature of the negotiations that are happening. Is it about a cola? Is there a cola? How, what's the structure that's being argued for? Okay, sure. So basically, we started, yeah, last summer.

And everything was going great. there was a lot of goodwill between affairal management and the union. And then as soon as we got to pay to salary, we are, we are, it got, it just fell apart. And they put it off and they put it off. And now we are at an impasse actually, Justin. We are at the place that we, we, we're so far apart is what they say. And so we have to go to a perk mediator. So we, we, we have stopped. We're, we're not, we're not moving forward. We, the, the perk, we had to wait for that. and we're actually going to be April 18th. We're supposed to have this mediator. And the mediator is the objective. They just want you to get to an agreement. And so that's happening

actually April 18th. So we're hoping to be able to show to have the mediator see that we have made a lot of movement. So that's what's going on right now. And because of the obscenely insulting amount that they were offering, especially in relationship again, to the new executive director who is making nearly $200,000, got a $15,000 moving fee, which had never happened before. And also, although we have a fleet of vehicles, she gets a $500 stipend for her vehicle, which is nobody understands that. So the whole idea was to create a broad base support from the community. And that was why we had the petition that we have now live. So if you don't mind putting the petition in there, we're still gathering signatures at this point we have over 600 to show this this community solidarity with library workers so we have the

petition going and we're also asking people to support library workers through contacting the board the board of trustees and that you can do that in person at the meetings which are once a month you can do that by by emailing trustees at frl.org and just saying i support a living wage for library workers and you can also give testimony virtually. that's where we're at right now. And we're hoping that maybe we can, you know, honestly, this library is very fear-oriented during my tenure there. All I ever saw was they would move because they were afraid of things. So maybe if they get afraid of the ignominy that comes from being outed for shamefully underpaying their people, maybe they'll, you know, step up. That's what we're hoping. I don't care why they do it. I just want them to do it. Actually, I do care. It's the right thing to do. Yeah, absolutely. When we were talking beforehand, since you already got in the change.org petition, and I'm also going to have the email available so you can email them. Maybe we'll add a little script or something just to get you started to make it easier for people to email. But we were talking beforehand before we started recording about the changes, the difference in how Sadie's Library is organized and how F-E-R-L is. And so could you talk a little bit about what we were mentioning? then about the unnecessary divide between staff and and librarians in the organization and how it works at different places. Oh, you mean in terms of creating a false division between union workers?

Yeah, and having separate bargaining units. I know that you said you got a letter from the other bargaining unit in support. Right, right, right. So yeah, thank you, Justin. Yeah. So we were speaking a little bit about how before I was actually there when we still had WPEA, but we didn't yet have AFSCME. And to me, it made sense just like what Sadie is experiencing, everyone is one union, where here at FDRL, they decided and their excuse was that librarians were supervising the public service assistance as well as the senior library assistants. And so they use that as a way to say, well, you can't have the same union. And that's why it was so interesting to me because Sadie and her library, they most definitely do. And so that does create up this false division, which is, of course, the way, you know, divide and conquer. And so with respect to that

right now, asked me, did have a separate contract, and but we did something we've never done before, which is me too. And that basically says, hey, you know, in contractually, if they make more than such and such percentage, then we get it to, in order to correct for that false division. But also, they, now that, I mean, they're my friends, you know, we all care about each other and care about economic justice. And so now, but it made them nervous to be able to speak up for us before their own contract was ratified. So the contract is ratified. And they're going to be giving us a letter of support to have solidarity. But, you know, the idea that they even have to, you know, jump over some of these, you know, go through these hoops or whatever, even to be able to do that goes to what Sadie and I were

discussing right before we recorded, which is that created this false setup that it goes against solidarity and which is ridiculous. Yeah, it is something I talk about, me and Jay talk about it a lot in terms of IWW membership because in the IWW can't be a member if you have hiring and firing power. And because librarians are supervisors, it's always a question of when is that threshold met? Because I can make recommendations for hiring, but I can't actually hire or fire someone, but I effectively could at least hire firing someone different. So, It's also like when you're talking about bargaining units, I think about this at my workplace, because, you know, obviously I want to unionize it. I would want it from, you know, the lowest paid person in, you know, the shitty Starbucks knockoff that we have all the way up to me. I don't know why I shouldn't be in a different bargaining unit from them because we're all working for the same employer, which is we all serve at the pleasure of the university president. That's the closest thing we have to a contract is that we serve at the pleasure of the president. if we all serve at the exact same level to the exact same person, then that should more or less be

the same bargaining unit. Of course, there's different people have hiring and firing power, but it's sort of that number of people is surprisingly small, even if we are all like, like my job, I am administrative and professional. That's how I'm classified. I'm not faculty. I'm administrative and professional, which means technically I guess I'm the same classification as both my supervisor who definitely does have hiring a firing power and his supervisor all the way up possibly to the president. We might all be in that same classification. So it always makes me think like if we were to unionize this school specifically, what would that look like? Would we have different bargaining units and how could we keep the bargaining units as small as like this is combined

as possible? Yeah. And at least in my experience, because the first library I worked at when I was doing public service had a librarian's union and every. everybody else was not unionized. That's different now. I believe that there's still two separate unions. But at the time that I was there, there was a, basically a crushed movement to unionize everybody else. And part of the huge problem of that was, you know, the librarians were already unionized. And they have a lot of influence as sort of those professional credentials, like, kind of employees. And that was part of the, part of the deal with the union is you had to be a credential. librarian to be a part of it, right? So that's why nobody else was a part of it. And it definitely did create kind of the false divide because even when they did support us, they weren't working for their own, you know, towards their own unionizing movement. So that kind of made it hard for them to support us in any material way. And then when the movement kind of got crushed and like couldn't get enough votes to even get to a, like couldn't get enough signatures to even get to a vote because

people were so paralyzed with fear that what then administration turned around and did and said is, well, we're giving you all of the same perks as the librarians union. You know, we're going to fix this, but without us actually still, without actually being a union. So it's like you can give us all of those perks, but they don't actually matter because we don't actually have anything besides, you know, policy that you get to change whenever you want to say whether or not, you know, we have these same, like, perks as the librarian union. I'm really happy that they're. got that they did manage to get unionized. Not happy that it's still a kind of a split thing. And at the library that I worked at previously from now had to had a manager's union and a par, I don't know,

paraprofessional and everybody else union. And it caused a lot of trouble too because it had been one union. In that union, a lot of the supervisory and manager people took leadership positions within the union. And so like a lot of them would act as president and this and that, which, It was a very small library, so it wasn't actually that big of a deal because everybody was really, really working together in the same team. And when it split, they started to have trouble getting people to actually step into those positions. And then when those people were in those positions, they didn't have the, they didn't necessarily have the skills to negotiate properly because that was kind of a thing that the supervisors already knew how to do. So when I first joined that, it was really sort of chaotic and couldn't get anywhere for a couple of years because they just didn't have the skills. they didn't have the people. People didn't necessarily want to volunteer for these positions because they seemed, you know, like harder. And yeah, so I'm really glad to be in a place where there is just one union. Like I was saying earlier, our union board or executive board is a mix of supervisors and non-supervisors. And a lot of what I've seen from our union, too, is those supervisors turn around and they, they're really advocating for their own employees. Like they're supervisors of clerks who are the lowest pay.

at minimum wage position. And like they're really advocating for their own workers that they work side by side every day that they deeply care about because, you know, they're a team. They feel more of a solidarity with their own workers than they do necessarily with the rest of the management team of the library. It's a pretty big library system. So like, yeah, the division of of labor there is is really important in that it's, it's really influential when it happens. It can be really, really good when it's like well not not that the separation but when there is no separation it could be really really good when it works yeah it's just from my experiences yeah that's such a shitty tactic and can i say something real quick about before we have to go say that you are saying basically

in a word solidarity and when the when the other thing i'm going to say is the the idea of fixing it you know no here's what's different if you've ever been in service industry and been in a server you know I mean, everything is whatever they decide, short of cleaning toilets, you know, if you've ever been a server. What's different here is a contract. A contract means consideration for both parties. That's the difference here. That's the union difference. We negotiate. You have a seat at the table. And we make the contract about the dignity of a living wage. And we have the solidarity of all of us for economic justice. Okay, my rant is over. No, Justin, you did not. You did not do the anime, so be national. I'm getting rid of that one. Can I officially love all three of you?

Can I just tell you this has been so much fun? Let's talk about a 32-hour work week another time, shall we? Labor should start. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so the petition is going to be in the notes. The email for the board is going to be in the notes.

I'm going to give you like a one-sentence head start, so you don't have to stare at scary blank email page. So use that to fire off an email. Quantity matters. I will put their phone number if you want two phones app them. Let's see. What else is going to be in the notes? The ability to attend meetings through the FBRO website is also in there.

Maybe the link to Joe Clement's piece. I don't know when you're airing, but that would be great because he's doing a piece, yeah, on this Monday. Yes. If that's out, I'll also link to that. I think there's already a link for it. So I'll be able to, even if it comes out before that. All right. Well, thank you so much, Dariot, for coming on.

Thank you so much. It was great to be with you all. This has been so much fun. Thank you. Yes. Good night.