It's been more than two years since library workers' contracts expired, but after more than 100 negotiation meetings, workers still have no contract and lack a clear picture of how a library reorganization will affect their jobs.
And though the University has made a comprehensive offer, according to Mark Nickel, director of the Brown News Service, negotiations are scheduled to continue, according to a union representative.
The library workers' three-year contract expired in September 2002, and a short-term extension lengthened the contract into 2003. But for more than a year and a half, library workers have lacked a contract.
University representatives have met with library representatives more than 100 times since negotiations began in September 2002, when the library workers' previous contract ended, said Karen McAninch, business agent for the United Service and Allied Workers of Rhode Island. At that time, the union agreed to extend the contract through early 2003, but library workers have been working without a contract since then, she said.
The central issue of the negotiations is the University's plan for library reorganization, Nickel said. According to Nickel, the University wants to change the libraries so that they are more useful to students and faculty and better reflect modern changes in information acquisition and dissemination.
But the lengthy negotiations and lack of a contract means workers have not received at least one annual across-the-board pay increase, which is part of most University workers' contracts. They could miss another raise if an agreement isn't reached by October, McAninch said.
This would mean changing the nature and hours of some library workers' jobs, which cover a broad range of work, including desk staffing, shelving and cataloguing, he said. Student workers and librarians are not part of the union.
Andy Moul, who works at the services desk of the John Hay Library, said he does not think the University has handled the negotiations in the best manner possible.
He criticized the University for ignoring the Job Committee, a standing committee made up of both administrators and union staff.
"To turn around and just ignore something is not like Brown. It seems like more of a business tactic than the operations of a liberal arts institution," he said.
According to Moul, another issue of high concern for union workers is a potential change in hours. Reorganizing the library to better serve the needs of students means having more staff work nights and weekends, Moul said. But most workers already have family and other commitments based on their current schedules, he said.
"We need to be able to say when we want to work," Moul said.
Moul said that he does not wish to see students' use of the libraries disrupted by a strike. He was a union member during the last strike in the early 1990s, which lasted five weeks and interrupted students' and faculty members' work, he said. But Moul said he doesn't see much compromise in the near future, on either side.
"You can expect the union to stick by its guns here. The union is not going to be easily swayed," he said.
One controversial change proposed by the University involves combining departments, McAninch said. Currently, some library workers are being cross-trained in both reference and circulation so that reference desk workers can also answer circulation questions, she said. In the past, non-union librarians have typically answered reference questions, but the reorganization means shifting jobs formerly done by professional workers to non-professional workers, McAninch said.
One factor leading to increased difficulty of library workers' jobs is the University's new policy of sub-contracting the processing of books to the companies who supply the books, McAninch said. In the past, library workers would select, catalogue and bind books, but under the new policy, the workers will create a template for the booksellers, who will also select the books that the Brown libraries receive.
McAninch said that with the relatively simple job of book processing taking place off campus, library workers will be called upon to perform more complicated tasks than they are currently asked to do. The union, which consists of about 90 workers, does not believe that the University is recognizing the additional work library workers have been and will be undertaking to comply with reorganization, McAninch said.
According to McAninch, the University originally said library workers would receive upgrades, meaning they would do higher-level work for increased wages. The University then said it did not have the money to upgrade library workers and that reorganization wasn't going to happen, McAninch said. But a significant part of the reorganization has already taken place and will continue to take place without upgrades for library workers if the University has its way, she said.
"The University has taken the position that they're only going to offer bare-bones wage increases - a lot less then they were going to originally offer," she said.
Nickel would not discuss the specifics of the University's offers to the union. But the contracts and wage levels the University is offering are in line with those of other unionized bargaining groups on campus.
Nickel and McAninch remain hopeful that the end of the two-year negotiations is near. Nickel expressed his wish for an agreement that would please both the University and the library workers.
For the upcoming meeting, McAninch said, "We've got the right people in the room that we could put something together."
McAninch said she's also been disappointed that Assistant Provost Tom Dean has not been a larger part of the negotiations. The head of the library reports directly to Dean, but he's only attended one meeting.
McAninch called Dean's minimal role in negotiations "a loss to the process."
But Nickel said negotiating is not Dean's job.
"The University has a negotiating team in which it has absolute confidence and that is the team that has been meeting and will be meeting with the union," he said.
Herald senior staff writer Kira Lesley '07 can be reached at herald@browndailyherald.com.
