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

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jan 14, 2012 5:40PM

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.