“Honk if you love librarians!” CRLS students and staff have heard these calls outside of the Cambridge Public Library every Friday morning. Since November last year, the Cambridge Public Library Staff Association (CPLSA) has been negotiating a contract which fights for fair wages, improved health and safety in the workplace, and accountability from their administration.
Many Cambridge library staff cannot afford to live in Cambridge. Hill Saxton, Senior Librarian of Youth Services and member of the union’s executive board, explained to the Register Forum, “the city is offering us wage increases that do not accurately assess cost of living, essentially meaning we would all be taking a pay cut.” According to a post made to the Cambridge Public Library Staff Association Instagram account, the average rent in Cambridge is 112% of one staff member’s pay after deductions. Despite this, librarians have continued working for over 100 days without a contract.
Furthermore, union members say that their wages do not accurately reflect the full extent of their work, including helping with technology and translation work. Saxton explained, “We are asking for a fair wage increase, including a base wage raise for all of the digital equity work we are providing on a daily basis […] [and] stipends for members providing multilingual help to patrons.” According to Saxton, management has agreed to the stipends for translation work, but none of the other demands brought forward by the union.
The other major issue brought up in the contract has to do with health and safety. Staff members are pushing for more sick leave to protect both themselves and library patrons. In a post made on October 1st to the CPLSA Instagram account, the union revealed that a staff member had been fired for bringing up health and safety concerns in the Hive, the library’s free makerspace. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), “It is a violation of the OSH Act for an employer to fire, demote, transfer, or retaliate in any way against a worker for filing a complaint or using other OSHA rights.”
Outside of this incident, Jania Green, from the Borrower Service Department, told the RF that 26 employees have resigned this year alone, due to unsafe and inequitable practices. She said, “if [management] had listened to things that staff said, it would have gone a long way towards preventing these.”
Mr. Montero, CRLS teacher and building representative for the Cambridge Education Association, explained that public employees, library staff, and teachers are fighting for many of the same things. He told the RF,“We want to be able to live in the city that we work in, and we are fighting for a lot of the same benefits, like family leave.” He added that teachers “couldn’t do what we do without [library staff].”
Saxton says that outside of contract negotiations, the union’s current goal is to gain more support from the Cambridge community. They explained, “We know the community loves and appreciates the library, and we want to remind them that we are the library.”
This article also appears in our October 2024 edition.
