Aldermen Burke, Reilly Call On Library Employees To Forgo Raises To Reopen Libraries On Mondays

How sad for our city, as well as our state and nation, that we keep electing these kind of people.  Shame on us.

I volunteer at a neighborhood branch of CPL. I just got home from my first volunteer shift since the budget cuts went into effect. They have lost about 40% of their staff. There are so many books to shelf and so many holds to process. The amount of work that needs to be done is overwhelming. This isn't because the employees there are lazy or slow - it is because a staff that small cannot do that volume of work efficiently no matter how hard they work. This branch is busy. Patrons (adults and children) were working at every table and every computer at the library. This branch is essential to its community, and it will absolutely be unable to provide the level service it has in the past under the current conditions.

Almost every library employee I know would be willing to have a freeze or a cut in the cost of living increase if it's an all City departments move, Aldermen included. These idiot aldermen voted on the budget and signed the AFSCME contract that included the annual cost of living increase. If they are "suprised" by the pay increase or the fact that losing nearly 180 employees would cause branches to close, they are either completely incompetent morons or just disguting liars. I don't know which is worse.

I think disgusting liars is a safer bet.

I've gone without a pay increase 3 of the last 4 years, and am likely to go without one again this year.

I sympathize with you. I have friends in the same boat. But seriously, I hope you are also trying to find another job. When the job market improves, I hope all the companies and organizations that have been using the "you're lucky to even HAVE a job" mantra will lose dearly when seasoned, valuable employees finally jump ship.

Twocee unwittingly makes a case for why labor rights are so important.  And we also know that public pay for similar private jobs is considerably less.

If the 3.5% increase is accurate, than my sympathy for the library workers goes down significantly.

I've gone without a pay increase 3 of the last 4 years, and am likely to go without one again this year.  That is the current economic reality and tough shit for me, but at least I have a job.  And I'll happily give up those increases in order to keep said job.

Calling the rollback of the head tax fee a corporate tax break is disingenuous at best.  The head tax fee outright penalizes companies for hiring people, and in a situation where you are trying to get companies to add to their payrolls, a straight penalty for adding an employee is ludicrous.  It needed to be done away with a long time ago.

The unions need to figure out that Rahm isn't going to blink in these fights, and that they have a decreasing amount of sympathy from people who are working in the private sector and could lose their job at any minute and from the thousands of unemployed who would be more than happy to give up a 3.5% pay increase to simply have a paycheck. 

Oh cry me a river. When was the last time these people got a raise. I'll bet it's been a while.

Ed Burke got a 6% raise this year, and we're paying for his bodyguards. If you're going to complain, complain about that.

Maybe instead of comparing private sector against public sector, we could compare public sector against public sector. For example, the aldermen proposing this make over $100,000 a year for what is considered a part-time job. The regular raise for alderman is 6.2% a year. Burke has a law firm on top of his alderman gig. Burke also has refused to give up his security detail, which he "earned" by being racist and awful during teh council wars. That security detail cost $600,000 in 2009. By giving up this security detail he could provide over 1/3 of $1.6 million the library workers will receive in cost of living increases.

Furthermore, what Burke and Emanuel are glossing over is that the 6 day 40 hour schedule proposed for the library means that library workers would be working a 6 day work week just to meet their 40 hours. That's a mandatory 6 day work week. Library workers are not charity workers - they are regular working people who have to pay their bills. They have families to take care of. Librarians have to have Masters Degrees. They help educate this city. They help keep kids safe and off the streets. They should not be devalued. The library hours and staff were cut back a year or so ago. Library
workers took furlough days. These current cuts are on top of the previous cuts and salary hits the library has already absorbed.. 

Maybe library workers should give up the cost of living increase, but if it is
expected of them why not every other city department? Why should a
library clerk making $35,000 be expected to work a six day week and not get a raise when the alderman are clearing over $100,000 for working "part-time" and getting a 6.2% raise? Maybe Burke and Reilly should clean their own house first.

Comparing public versus private is valid because for a very long time the public sector has avoided the financial hits that the private sector has been absorbing for the past several years, especially in Chicago, because of the power of their unions.  Public employees are finally being asked to face the reality of the budget that pays their salaries, and they aren't very happy about.  Would I be happy if I were in their shoes?  Probably not -- but as I said earlier, I'm not particularly thrilled about not getting a raise either.

I agree with you on aldermanic salaries, but that's not really the point of this topic.  It is an unfortunate thing that it is Burke who making these points, as I find Burke a rather odious person (but then again, most of city council members are).  But it does not diminish his point, nor make the argument any less valid. 

According to the Trib article, the union is fighting to have Monday afternoons restored, which would give them a 48-hour workweek - that's six days.  As it stands now, Rahm wants a 40 hour work week, with half days on Monday and Friday.  So they would still work 6 days a week under either plan, but they would be working 8 hours less under Rahm's plan.  I'm not sure how Rahm is asking them to work more hours for less money.

I'm not devalueing library employees.  I worked in a library for 4 years and I have great respect for them.  I do not however have respect for their union, I do not think they are choosing the wise path in this fight, and I ultimately think they are not only going to lose, they are going to do so in a way that makes them look just as bad as the CPS union is making the teachers look. 

Public employees in general are not being asked to make sacrifices in this instance -just library workers. If the alderman were suggesting a city-wide cut in the cost of living increase thsu would be a different discussion. This is not a library budget crisis - this is a city budget crisis. The city budget includes the city council salaries and Burke's security detail - that is why it is relevant. Cutting the library budget means cutting needed and well-used services available to the entire city. Cutting Burke's security detail and his city-provided car and other unnecessary expenses should come before cutting vital services.

The schedule Rahm is proposing for library workers is unlike anything else being proposed in other city departments. Rahm wants a 6 day 40 hours schedule to try to camouflage the fact that he is cutting 8 hours of library service at each branch every week. He wants to be able to say libraries are still open 6 days a week. He is trying to make the union his scapegoat for the unpopular decision of cutting library services.

Employees would not work a 6 day week under both plans - only with Rahm's plan. Under the 48 hour work week plan, which is what the union is seeking, the shifts are staggered across the 6 days. Full time employees worked a 40 hour week over the course of 5 days - they do not work a 6 day week. This is how it has been for years. Full time library workers did not work a 48 hours week before.

Under Rahm's 40 hours/6 day plan, every full time library worker would have to work a 6 day week just make their full time. They are working the same number of hours but it is spread out over 6 days instead of the traditional 5. For a working parent, this means another day of day care or hiring a babysitter. It means one less day you can spend with your family. It's another day of commuting expenses. It's one less day you have time to clean your house run your errands or god forbid do something enjoyable with your time. You may say, it's only four hours, but factor in commuting time etc you can easily be talking about 6 hours. You end up having a whole city department that has a one day weekend. It's ridiculous to expect people to live their lives like that. It's also an awful precedent to set for libraries in general. We have one of the largest library systems in the world. If we agree that library workers should have to work a 6 day week just get the minimum full time pay what kind of example does that set for the profession and for city services?

So, the best deal on the table from the city is to close libraries on Mondays? Seems like it. If that is so, the union needs to start making that clear or they are going to get tattooed like the teachers have been. At the moment they don't seem to be getting this narrative, or the six-day work week narrative out there.

In a fundamental way I think that 2C is right that public workers are being hit now by what private workers were being hit with before. Particularly in Illinois and Chicago there is going to be a period where services (and employees) are scaled back to the tax revenue stream. That is going to suck. As I've said before, the challenge is to manage that with as little destruction as possible. I am not sure that City Hall or the unions have reached the conclusion yet that they would both benefit from trying to work together on this.

They have been really bad at communicating the implications of the half day plan. I mean a mandatory 6 day work week is not a minor concession. This is not just the union being greedy.

I work for a non for profit. I would say 5 out of the past 10 years I have not had a cost of living increase. I do not make a lot of money. I am very aware of the realities of the economy. I don't think the public sector should necessarily be immune from the same forces the rest of us are exposed to. But I think the libraries are one of the worst places to be cutting the city budget, because of what they provide to the city (especially in a time of economic trouble when people use libraries more than ever). I think there should be more focus on cutting waste and corruption (which I realize is a more difficult and complicated task).

Being open 5 days a week may be the best deal out there, but this is not the mayor's desired solution. He wants the 6 day/40 hour week. Closing the libraries on Mondays with little notice to the libraries themselves was a strong arm tactic to get the union to cave. He is trying to make the union responsible for the cut hours - not his own budget.

I agree that both parties should be working together to find the least damaging way to deal with the budget impact on the libraries and thus the communities. But the mayor is asking for far too much from the library workers right now.

This is one of those times when I feel trapped between a turd and a crap sandwich. Generally if Ed Burke is for it, I assume that I want to be against it. On the other hand, the points you've made about the reality in the private sector is spot on. Finally, the idea that the 3.5% raise is "fair pay for working people" is probably not well-played. Specifically in light of the fact that it will be part of the reason other working people are no longer working.

I also think that you hit the nail on the head when you said that Rahm is not going to blink with the unions. One of the great errors in judgment the unions made when Rahm got elected was staying off the bandwagon until he didn't need them. Not only doesn't he seem to want to be mayor for life, but he's already crushed the opposition with the unions. Not good times for them.

Can we forgo Ed Burke and Brendan Reilly instead?

CPL staffers are just as insanely overpaid as the teachers, garbage men, police officers, and firefighters. All of them need a haircut. 

So here is an actual analysis of their salaries: http://goo.gl/YvAmE

The average employee makes $51,000 a year. That doesn't seem terrible to me especially when you consider lots of employees in the library budget are required to have a masters degree.

But you realize that (a) you are falling into a troll hole (for which there is a toll, but I digress), and (b) the city just doesn't have the money for the number of reasonable expenses it has, right? Ultimately it is not about whether library employees are overpaid (they are not), it is about the level of service that is sustainable give $X in tax revenue.

I agree with both those statements. But I feel the library is so important that if 1.6 mil is all that is stopping the library from staying open 6 days a week, that we should be look else where in the budget to find. Or reform TIF which steal money from the library budget.

I would have thought you'd at least support Commissioner Gordon.

obvious troll is obvious.

That's pretty funny. Make sure you let Second City Cop know that.

Could you provide some statistics about what an average staffer makes to justify your statement. And with all the recent deaths by Chicago PD I think its a bit much to call them overpaid. Too bad we cant find out your salary so we can complain about how over paid you are.

Here's a pretty good example. When the dedicated shelver positions were cut years back and the librarians had to pick up the slack, the physical exertion was too much for these poor soles and they demanded their weekly hours be cut back to 35 a week. It's a den of thieves. 

I'm a library employee and that's just not true. We have always (well, in the last 15 yrs) worked 37.5 hours a week. No one requested our hours be cut back to 35.

That is an anecdote, not an example. No matter what you do, or what you make, I assure you that you are overpaid.

Difference: If my boss thinks I'm overpaid, he can fire me. I think librarians are overpaid, and I'll be thrown in jail if I refuse to pay my taxes to support them. 

And if City that the library staff was overpaid they would not have given the a cost of living wage as part of the contract.

You could just move. Far away.

Or the city could provide people value for their money instead of supporting an entrenched bureaucracy that provides marginally valuable services used by a small minority of Chicagoans.

I hate to feed the troll, but you just don't know what you are talking about. The library serves much more than a "small minority of Chicagoans." Last year, nearly 9 million items circulated and there were 2.5 million computer sessions..

It'd be better if you moved though.

Like Alderman Burke would give up a nickle of his pay to help anyone. What a POS. Will Burke give up his wasteful and expensive security detail to help balance the City budget?  Will he reduce his expense account? We could also easily do with half the number of Aldermen we have now. How about you start cutting some real fat before you ask employees to give up pay that the City has agreed to? 

Leave poor Slow Eddie alone. It's not like he's got a police pension, as well as permission to carry a sidearm. Oh wait . . .

What a bunch of baloney. We can give TIF funds to businesses that would come here without the promises of TIF money, but we can't use it to keep the libraries open for a day.

"Irregardless." Not just a typo.

Thanks, I didn't realize irregardless was not a standard word until I just looked it up.