AFSCME Chief Offers Emanuel A Plan To Keep Libraries Open On Mondays

You don't know what you've got until it's gone. That oft-used cliche applies to library branches being open on Mondays. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has gone out of his way to lay the blame for the city's decision to shut down library branches on Mondays at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, saying AFSCME is using the library closings as a "bargaining chip." Ald. Ed Burke and Brendan Reilly jumped on the bandwagon and wrote a letter to AFSCME Council 31 executive director Henry Bayer calling on union members to give up a 3.5 percent pay raise this year.

Seeing that Emanuel is promising that private donations will cover the security costs for the May NATO and G8 summits, Bayer said yesterday a similar proposal could be used to restore library services on Mondays.

“Library services are much more important to Chicago’s neighborhoods than bringing the G-8 to the city. If those people can afford to put up $45 million or $60 million, which is the city’s estimate, why isn’t he out there asking them, `Wouldn’t you be willing to pay a little bit more — just a fraction of that $60 million — which could be used to keep the libraries open’ ” six days-a-week?

The letter Burke and Reilly sent Bayer suggested that union members forgoing their pay raises could save the city $1.6 million, which would restore library service on Mondays and 120 of the 176 layoffs that also happened. Bayer said Emanuel is “looking for scapegoats rather than solutions” and that the library cuts would have been deeper if other aldermen hadn't voiced their displeasure to the mayor.

Emanuel has already drawn his line in the sand with labor, and it runs deep and bold. But we wonder if his belligerent stance will only serve to rally the troops. Bayer said, “The mayor shows contempt for city employees. He likes to portray city employees as something other than hard-working. [But] all I know is when I came into work this morning, the streets had been plowed. I don’t think the mayor did that. City workers did that."

Then there's the ongoing dispute between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union over longer school days. There's an obvious contradiction between a school board that rescinds a pay raise to the union because they say they can't afford it, then offers schools $100,000 to switch to longer school days.

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By Chuck Sudo in News on January 14, 2012 11:40 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Mimihaha

Emanuel, Burke and Reilly are union-busting thugs.

Lorna Donley

Fuck the G8, RE wants a G6! On the backs of working-class Chicagoans, unemployed South-siders with no internet access, and library workers who've already been doing more with less. Circulation statistics for 2010/11, factored with shorter hours under Daley bear this out. A branch worker just reported circulation went from 47,000 in 2007 to 66,018 in 2011 with staff dropping from 8 to 4.5 FTE. That's 29% more work, with 43% less staff. They said it's common across the city.

Michael_Hudson

I don't see how the union is going to look bad in this fight - they are fighting to serve the public here, bottom line. They want to do their jobs. And that raise is a cost of living increase agreed to in the contract signed by Daley. There's no hiding that the problem here is political will, not budget.

Joseph Finn

Of course it's a bargaining chip, for both sides. But for the union, it's a chip of "full opening hours are a necessity." Advantage, union and users.