Workers at Halifax Public Libraries (HPL) have been on strike since August 26. Librarians, library technicians/assistants, and administrative, technical and maintenance staff at HPL, represented by Nova Scotia Union of Public Employees (NSUPE) Local 14, are fighting for better wages, more sick time, and equal leave provisions for adoptive parents.
Speaking with Christina Covert and Chad Murphy, President and Vice President of NSUPE Local 14, respectively, Spring learned more details about what led to the strike, how unions and the community can support the striking library workers, and some of the broader context surrounding the issues at the bargaining table.
Frontline workers, poverty wages
Wages are a key piece of the bargaining puzzle that led to the strike. Murphy noted that library workers are “taking in more social shortcomings from our communities—those experiencing being unhoused, food insecurity, people just looking for shelter—so our roles have changed quite a bit. Specifically since COVID, we’ve helped a lot of those people look for housing with partnerships that the libraries have.”
Unfortunately, despite this support they provide to community members, library workers themselves are also subject to physical and verbal abuse. A CBC investigation on “security incidents” at public libraries found that Halifax Public Libraries had a median 0.4 incidents per 10,000 visits between 2015-2022; in 2023, this rose to 0.8 incidents. Connecting the issue back to working conditions and wages, Murphy observes that if library workers are expected to act as social workers, they should be paid like social workers.
“It’s hard for our members who are struggling with these same issues to help someone in that same position when they can’t even help themselves,” said Murphy. He highlights that some members are using the free food programs they themselves are providing to community members.
Murphy says that, during conciliation, the closest point of agreement on wages was a one-dollar increase over four years. Management even rejected this, offering instead 25 cents over four years.
“That’s not really acceptable,” says Murphy, noting that the union calculated the total cost of paying the $1 increase for 2023 would be $156,000. “It would’ve given [management] 2.5 years to go to council and ask for that money,” he added. In fact, Murphy stresses their ask was not unreasonable at all and they could have even asked for more, based on some of the conditions library workers deal with on a daily basis.
Some of these situations include community members using drugs at libraries, resulting in library workers having to respond to overdoses or clean up drug paraphernalia. While the workers do what they can to solve these issues as they arise, members do not feel empowered to come up with solutions themselves and that the Occupational Health and Safety plans are “mostly coming from a management perspective,” Murphy adds, because staff are not consulted for potential solutions.
One potential solution, offered by Murphy, is to invest in better training for library staff. While staff who work in branches do receive non-violent crisis intervention training, it can be inadequate when dealing with the range of situations faced by community members. Another possible option would be instituting a zero-tolerance policy for harassment from patrons, like the policy that exists for harassment from other staff members.
Other key issues for library workers
Other key issues include sick benefits and parental leave provisions.
Currently, the collective agreement only allows for two days absence without leave before seniority is forfeited and employment can be terminated; the union is demanding at least five days before any discipline can be taken against workers.
“Employees were being contacted [when out sick], they would either not answer or let it go,” said Murphy. “HPL would essentially get tired of trying to communicate with them and want to send police over, or someone to do a wellness check. We’re viewing that as an invasion of privacy.”
Covert added that, due to the strain on the health care system in the province, oftentimes members are waiting to hear back about surgeries, procedures, and so on. They may not have anything new to tell the employer, and for this reason the union does not view them as “absent without leave.”
Covert also observed that it’s the only provision with “an immediate punitive consequence.” The union does not oppose disciplinary action per se, but “would like to see this article in alignment with the rest of our collective agreement so that it’s progressive discipline,” said Covert.
Parental leave has also been a significant issue because, as Murphy and Covert both point out, the language in the current contract means adoptive parents are only eligible for 11 weeks of parental leave compared to 15 weeks for biological birthing parents. Since the government has introduced extended leave, where parents can take anywhere from 12 to 18 months’ leave, the union’s goal is to ensure adoptive parents can remain eligible to receive the same top-up rates as biological parents. Library management has sought to remove these protections for extended leave top-up rates, even though adoptive parents are neither a common occurrence nor a high cost to provide those supports.
Library workers stretched thin
Library workers are also facing substantial issues with staffing and support. The strategic workforce review that was completed in 2022 resulted in some instances of severe branch understaffing, according to Murphy. He stresses that management is not taking the issues seriously.
“We’re dealing with our daily work, there’s a lot put on our plates on a daily basis,” says Covert. “People only have so much to give, and we reach our threshold really quickly. If we could work on easing some of the other pressures on us, we would be more suited and ready to deal with some of these more intense situations.”
That workforce review also resulted in the consolidation of job classifications. Before, there were several levels of library assistant; now, there are only service support and service advisor positions.
“It pulled our front line staff further apart,” Covert stresses. “[Before the review] anything from [a library assistant 3] to [a library assistant 6] could work the desk. Now, we just have service advisors and specialists, and our leads from time to time. [Management] says we have the same amount of people working within the library, which we do, but we don’t have as much flexibility for our front line staff to be out on the desks and doing programming, and all the wonderful things our staff do.”
Public library workers on strike have laid bare what librarian and scholar Fobazi Ettarh has termed vocational awe: “the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in beliefs that libraries as institutions are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique.”
This results in the values of freedom, service, and duty becoming paramount expressions of library work; conversely, failure to live up to these values becomes a personal flaw. This leads to burnout because of inadequate compensation, the emphasis on “whole-person” librarianship, and intensified job creep. Precisely because of vocational awe, many library workers feel like they cannot discuss these issues directly, for fear of appearing uncaring or ungrateful.
Decision-makers skirting responsibility
While Halifax Public Libraries is technically a separate entity from Halifax Regional Municipality, libraries are funded by the city budget. So even though the HPL Board (which includes members of council) is responsible for managing HRM’s public library system, including collective bargaining, they are still required to ask city council for money to conduct its operations. This system allows for the two levels of management—HRM and the library board—to each shift responsibility onto the other.
For this reason, the union has still been encouraging community members to contact their councillors because they do have a say on how budgets are voted on and so distributed, even as councillors are saying it isn’t their responsibility.
“We know that they essentially need to work together to figure this situation out. We can’t do that for them,” Covert stresses. “We’re trying to make them aware. We are vital to our communities. Our staff want to get back to serving our communities. But we won’t do that any more until there’s something fair and reasonable, in our opinions, brought back to the table.”
In comparison to HRM workers, Covert continues, library workers are severely underpaid.
Covert notes that the bargaining team have been told the library board “doesn’t want to go above the three percent [wage increase] because it sets a precedent for other unions to say, ‘we want that,’ but we’re not asking for them to give us more [than other HRM workers]. We’re asking to be fairly treated in comparison to our HRM counterparts.”
Covert further stresses that the compensation packages do not paint a full picture because “a good chunk of our membership is part-time, so [current salary scales] are based on full-time hours, but a lot of our membership […] is not even receiving that full compensation that HPL is portraying in their communications.”
This inadequate compensation package also affects the benefits and pension contributions that members have—in principle. Like with wages, Covert notes that many members also cannot afford to buy their benefits (which are “flex benefits” that members must purchase themselves), or they cannot afford to make pension contributions.
Indeed, the wage model provided by Halifax Public Libraries in their August 2 update omits the lowest-paid positions at the library; the clerks responsible for shelving materials and keeping branches tidy, who make just $16.45/hour. These clerks, along with some of the other lowest-paid members in the union, are actually making more on strike than they do at work, according to Murphy.
In comparison, according to the 2024 statement of compensation released by HRM, the Chief Librarian and CEO’s salary was $194,252.76; the Manager (Access)’s salary was $114,102.03; and the Director (Strategy)’s salary was $146,256.67. You can see the full list of managers making more than $100,000 on the Halifax Sunshine List. The 2024 living wage for Halifax is $28.30, a seven percent increase from 2023, according to the recent Living Wage report released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives last month.
Halifax community supports library workers on strike
At the time of our conversation, the union has not been in talks with management since the strike began on August 26. While striking is hard work, Covert says, the support of the community has been encouraging.
“Our customers are coming out, they’re walking the picket line, local businesses and communities are dropping off coffee, Timbits, cookies, fruit, and water,” she says.
“Our customers know that we are the ones they see on a daily basis, we are the ones who have formed these connections with them, and they severely miss us, but very much understand why we’re on the picket line.” It’s this momentum, she continues, that is keeping the strike going until management is ready to come back to the table.
Fortunately, Halifax public library workers have gotten wise to the perils of vocational awe.
Community members have been contacting the library board and their councillors to advocate for striking library workers, in addition to visiting the rotating picket lines at branches across the city. To complement the physical picket lines, the union is also calling on the community to respect the digital picket line as well. Murphy said members understand the inconvenience that patrons cannot use the materials at branches, but the union’s position is that this should also extend to digital materials since using them allows management to keep stalling negotiations and so prolong the strike.
When asked about how unions specifically can support striking library workers, Murphy noted how walking the picket line and dropping off water or food to the lines is greatly appreciated. Covert added that for financial support, cheques can be addressed to NSUPE in care of Local 14 strike relief, and reiterated the need to contact city councillors and the library board.
On September 3, there was rally at City Hall organized by NSUPE Local 14. The union demonstrated it is willing to continue fighting for fair wages, increased parental leave, consistent progressive discipline, and an end to employer control of sick leave.
Community members and other unions also came out to support library workers. As Shelby Whynot, Vice President of Local 14 observed when talking with Suzanne Rent in her report on the City Hall rally for the Halifax Examiner, “You kind of have to be a Jack or Jill of all trades to be a library worker because the job is connecting people to resources.” She adds that this isn’t always a book. “It could be a shelter. It could be a job. You kind of have to know where to look for the answers if you don’t know the answers yourself.”
Show your support for library workers on the picket line, by calling and emailing your local councillor, or by posting a support poster in your window or at your workplace.
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