CITYWATCH Organizing effort targets PPL BY BRIAN C. JONES

A drive is underway to unionize between 85 and 90 librarians and clerks at the Providence Public Library, less than a year after the library cut nearly 30 permanent jobs and instituted other financial cutbacks. The United Service & Allied Workers of Rhode Island, which seeks a non-confrontational approach, intends to ask the library to accept the union as the workers’ official bargaining representative if a majority of eligible employees sign union cards.

If library officials agree, it would avoid an election in which workers would vote for or against union representation, a process that often results in bitter and divisive campaigns between management and union supporters. The library currently has 179 workers.

Karen McAninch, business agent for the union, says the Providence City Council will be asked to support the card-recognition approach during its May 19 meeting. A resolution supporting the right of library workers to unionize was on the docket for the meeting, sponsored by Councilman David A. Segal, Council President John J. Lombardi and four others.

McAninch says more than half of the workers have already signed union cards, and that the union continues to seek more. "Obviously, there’s a lot of impetus after what happened last year," she says, referring to cutbacks instituted by the private, non-profit library after it was unable to get an increase in the city’s $3 million annual grant.

Last July 16, the library trimmed 21 of 200 jobs, including the elimination of seven of the 14 reference librarians in its highly regarded Central Branch, which includes the Statewide Reference Resource Center, and it also reduced that building’s operating hours. Other cuts included outsourcing janitorial work, eliminating seven janitorial and maintenance payroll jobs that had been represented by the United Service & Allied Workers. The union continues to represent four remaining maintenance workers.

Earlier this month, the library announced that continued level-funding by the city is forcing it to consider cutting back hours at its 10 branches, and to stop using six temporary workers brought in to do some of the work formerly done by employees. Officials say no permanent jobs will be cut this time and that employees will get raises.

One issue rankling some library workers last summer was what they considered excessive administrative salaries and above-inflation pay hikes received by managers in the past several years. The latest public federal tax forms filed by the library — for the 2003-2004 financial year, which ended last June 30 — shows another round of raises, ranging from 4 percent to 13 percent for the five highest paid officials whose salaries are required to be listed. The biggest raise — a 13.7 percent, $12,484 hike — went to assistant director Daniel Austin, for a total $103,521 salary. Library Director Dale Thompson was the highest paid official, at $142,800, the result of a 4.3 percent raise ($5,843 raise) from the year before.

Some library workers question why the executive raises — the five biggest total just over $34,000 — came in a year when the library was preparing to implement cutbacks.

Tonia Mason, a spokeswoman for the library, writes in an e-mail that these raises, and those of "all eligible staff," were announced in September 2003, and the cuts took place in the next fiscal year, when no raises were granted. "All members of the library staff are working at the same salary this year as they were in fiscal year 2004, including the administration, librarians, and clerical staff," Mason wrote.

McAninch, the union official, says rank-and-file library salaries are in $20,000s and $30,000s. She says workers are concerned about more than money following last year’s cutbacks. Union supporters also are concerned about "having a seat at the table and how decisions are made," she says.