Unite!

Joan Dillon

Librarians' unions are a reality.

An old-fashioned literature search shows a geometric progression in the number of articles in the profession's journals that deal with the librarian as a member of the labor movement.

The librarians are following the lead of teachers and nurses in demanding recognition.

The term, "Public Servant," or "Service Profession," has been a noose around the necks of nurses, teachers, and librarians. It has meant quite simply that we were to work around the clock out of a peculiar compulsion to serve and to suffer. It has never meant that we were shown a special respect, a sense of consideration, or a sense of compassion because we did serve.

Our profession is similar to others in that all of us have the same academic qualifications. The administrative staff of public libraries has its share of masters degrees, and more or less experience than the librarians it administrates. In other professions, members of the profession participate in the management of the operation. The selection of a department head at the will of his peers is a respected university tradition. Even our public schools, with their limited function, have full faculty meetings to discuss and plan curriculum, program and management for the school. The chief surgeon holds staff meetings with all the doctors, not to tell them what to do, but to discuss with them what they all shall do.

Participatory management is a favorite term of the moment in the library world. It gets a lot of lip service, but it is seldom actually used, perhaps because our management experience is so limited. This kind of management is a tried and trusted industrial technique. It is designed to get the fullest participation from the workers, and therefore, the greatest production.

Participatory management is not a suggestion box. Neither is it encounter groups, nor yet buzz sessions. These devices are used in libraries to keep working librarians from the boiling point. There is a simple yes or no answer, a little more buzz, but never, under any circumstance, is there give and take discussion, a plan developed out of what has been said. The library profession will fail (perhaps it already has) to develop competent library administrators unless librarians begin early in their careers to share in the making of important decisions. Participatory management means just that. The workers initiate action. They help run the plant. They make decisions, logically, because they do the work.

A library administration, not frightened by the spectre of the union, can use this highly organized, highly motivated group to build the library. This means listening and reacting to proposals. It means acceptance of all librarians as colleagues.

Many library administrators, however, tend to follow the mythical belief that they are management and the working librarians are labor. This ridiculous position is maintained in the face of the fact that the entire operating budget comes from the same sources; we are all on the same payroll, and all of us are finally responsible to the same elected official and even he is not the boss. No matter how hard you look, or how talented you are at rationalization, there is no profit, no loss, no management, no labor. It is just us folks, here at the public library.

A librarians' union makes participatory management a reality. It guarantees dialog with the library administration. It guarantees action. No longer does the fact that the library administration is too timid, or actually unable to solve a problem, mean that the problem cannot be solved. The union is not handicapped by the administration's obligation to a governing body and can act effectively in its own interests as well as in the library's interests.

The rapid increase in librarians' unions is evidence that librarians' wages, hours and working conditions are not acceptable.

Major concerns of these unions center around the quality of the library program, the library's goals, the library's services. Working at a local level, intimately concerned with these practical problems, union members become personally involved with the solutions. They are better able to evaluate the effectiveness of these solutions.

Working conditions take precedent at union meetings. Within the framework of working conditions, we see the entire library program. Our work makes the program. The plan effects the quality of the work. To this end, librarians' unions are negotiating contracts or memoranda of agreement that will actually spell out how participatory management shall be implemented.

Ultimately, all administrative personnel should be selected after conferring with the union. It is footling in the extreme to appoint an administrative staff that is not respected by the working staff. Perhaps we shall see the selection of administrative staff by their peers in the profession, just as the universities have done for these many centuries.

The American Library Association and similar organizations, fail not only because they do not have the interests of individual librarians at heart, but because they have never developed the machinery to understand specific problems in individual libraries: they deal in abstractions. A librarians' union works to improve and protect the position of the individual librarian, and this is the fundamental reason for the growth of unions in libraries. The union functions outside the management hierarchy. It is not handicapped by "proper" channels. It makes no difference to us who is staff and who is line. Discussion within the union is open to all members. There are no formalities to inhibit creative thinking.

The union can work well with administration, but it can never be its right arm. Only if the union maintains its independence and its integrity will it continue to be effective in improving wages, hours, and working conditions for librarians and in building the library itself.