Busting Privatization at Library Speaks Volumes
Jersey City Public Library workers win court battle and stop privatization dead in its tracks.
JERSEY CITY, N.J.
Veteran librarian Christina Arroyo didn’t need to read between the lines to know that a $6.5 million contract award to a private company spelled T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
The privatization battle began last summer when the library’s Board of Trustees unilaterally hired the Maryland-based Library Systems and Services, Inc. (LSSI). The private contractor was brought in to computerize the 109-year-old library’s card catalogue and improve other library operations.
Under terms of the $6.5 million contract — effective Sept. 1, 1998 to June 30, 2001 — LSSI would have processed library bills, including payroll checks, maintained equipment and overseen the library’s 11 branches. It would also have advised the board of trustees on personnel issues such as hiring, firing and reassigning both union and non-union workers.
PROMISES, PROMISES. Arroyo, who is Vice President of AFSCME Local 2265 (Council 52), explains that the costly, union-busting privatization scheme would have created a non-union workforce doing bargaining-unit work. “Although the contractor had promised to maintain salaries and benefits for current workers along with no layoffs, many of our members still feared they would lose their jobs, especially since LSSI would have had the right to conduct performance reviews and could make cuts that would normally be almost impossible under civil service rules,” she says. The local represents 84 workers who are library assistants, security guards and cleaning and maintenance employees.
New Jersey civil service law states that a worker whose job is eliminated is first in line if that job is ever recreated.
Under the LSSI scheme, the library board would have been barred from hiring its own employees during the term of the agreement. Instead, the private contractor would have had the “sole and absolute right” to hire LSSI employees to perform work for the library. This would have created a parallel workforce of private-sector workers doing bargaining-unit work, but without civil service protection and with no guarantee of receiving the same level of benefits, wages and protections enjoyed by Local 2265 members.
“Our workers would truly have suffered with LSSI at the helm, hiring who it wanted and busting the union in the process,” says Arroyo. “Morale was at an all-time low.... “The stress of not knowing from day to day about job security was unbelievable, and that’s when my blood started to boil,” says the 22-year library worker who is now a supervising library assistant. “I don’t go looking for trouble, but when it finds me, I make a lot of noise.”
PUTTIN’ ON THE BLITZ. So did 30 other members of Arroyo’s local including Delores Cordero who helped keep up the momentum by mobilizing co-workers to protest in front of the library during lunch.
“We yelled ‘public yes, private no,’ ‘books, not politics’ and ‘honk if you agree,’ to passing motorists,” says Cordero. On weekends the workers carried posters and their cause to shopping malls and parking lots.
In addition, the local — with funding and legal assistance from Council 52 — took the library board and LSSI to court, claiming that the privatizing contract was illegal under state library laws. Local 2265 also alleged that the board breached its fiduciary duty to the public by transferring virtually all of its management responsibilities to LSSI.
By early October, the workers had their day in court — and won. Superior Court Judge Arthur N. D’Italia granted the union’s request for a temporary injunction against the board and the contractor. Citing the scheme as “ambiguous, vague and fraught with illegalities,” the judge ordered the library’s board of trustees to stop paying LSSI.
“For now, the contractor is out of a job, and we helped save the library nearly $1 million in the process,” says Local 2265 President Joe Cali.
He explained tht the board’s allocation of the award to LSSI exceeded the library’s annual budget. Aside from covering salaries and benefits, LSSI would have had to dole out a minimum of $650,230 for library materials, $48,453 for program expenses and another $60,000 in youth and adult educational training programs.
LSSI was to receive all of the board’s funds over each 12-month period of the agreement, from which it would take its fees and pay all costs. Anything remaining would be LSSI’s to keep as profit, rather than being returned to the taxpayers to enhance the library’s services.
Cali says that under LSSI, the library branches that would have run out of money would not have been able to obtain additional funding from the contractor.
LSSI had planned to save money by trimming administration positions above the branch level.
FACT-FINDING MISSION. “Before LSSI, we had never been hit with privatization,” says Cali. “Fighting back was a real test of AFSCME’s strength and solidarity,” he says. LSSI hopes to be the pioneer in the field of public library privatization.
“But here in Jersey City, there was no such alternative for our members, except those who were close to retirement.”
Joining the union’s lawsuit, the city council charged the board with usurping its authority by entering into a contract that only the council was empowered to. The council claimed that the board inappropriately allocated funding without the council’s approval.
Following the judge’s ruling, the board began the process of hiring a new contractor. The board also said it would adhere to competitive bidding. New Jersey requires that all municipal contracts greater than $4,500 be subject to competitive bidding.
Arroyo is hopeful, “Right now, we’re cautiously optimistic that management in its attempt to revamp and revitalize the library will do so without dismantling our bargaining unit.”
Local President Cali chimes in with a warning: “Any time privatization rears its ugly head, management better believe that the union will be ready and waiting to knock it off.”
By Venida RaMar Marshall
