NY City Librarians Testify for Living Wage

Living wage campaign Update

The heads of the three library systems testified at recent city council hearings on the Mayor’s proposed budget cuts. Brooklyn PL has already raised the salary rates of librarians, library assistants, and has created the technical resource specialist (TRS) as a promotional clerical title. At these hearings, Paul Le Clerc and Susan Kent testified that NYPL will also introduce the technical resource specialist in 2007.

The Queens borough Public library has indicated that the TRS title will be added and that library assistants, comparable to the IA title, will be reinstituted after being discontinued for many years. Queens mentioned that they will consider hiring clericals at the OAIII level, instead of Office Aide I. This has been a very important demand in Local 1930”s Living Wage Campaign. BPL has 200 fewer staff members since 9/11/01. NYPL is currently down 200 members also. As we are well aware, NYPL continues to expand service hours without adequate staff, resulting in more Saturday work.