COUNCIL 2 continues to expand its membership among staff at the King County Library System as more and more workers realize the benefits of joining a union..

Not only is membership in the system growing, it also is expanding into the ranks of the more senior library staff.
The latest addition came in an election held on December 22 when 83 supervisory members voted by a two-to-one margin to join Council 2.

The new organizing win capped a year in which Council 2 experienced gains that added some 300 workers to its ranks. (See full report page 3.)

The first unit to organize in the King County Library System was Local 1652-lm, representing King County library maintenance workers.

The second set of King County Library employees to join Council 2 were the 550 who voted on December 3, 2002 to join the ranks of Council 2 in the largest local government election in memory that the union has won.

In 2004, that new Local, 1857, representing 45 public library branches, reached agreement on a contract with the administration. The Local recently negotiated a new contract (see report on Page 1).

Now a third has been formed by the mid-level supervisors, who include assistant managing librarians, legacy managers, children’s section supervisors, supervising library assistants and supervising library associates.

Moves toward the formation of the new unit began with the establishment by five supervisors of clasp — the Corps of Librarians, Associates and Supervisory Personnel — in early 2006.

The five staff members, who formed the official organizing committee, drew up a mission statement, which read: “We believe the time has come for the employees of the King County Library System to join together to ensure that we have a voice in the many decisions that impact the services we provide to our communities.

“We believe the energy and creativity of employees can be more effectively utilized to produce an efficient and friendly organization that both the employees and the public can be proud of. We believe this can be accomplished by forming a union.”

Among the group’s goals were to obtain the ability to negotiate and create a legally binding and enforceable contract, to provide a framework for communication with the administration, to have a voice in the formation of policies that are equitable, fair and consistently applied, and to gain the dignity and respect that creates high employee morale and a positive work environment, thereby better serving the community.

A major reason the members sought to join Council 2 was the creation of “clusters,” says Council 2 Director of Organizing Bill Keenan.

Clustering involves the reorganization of the library system so that two, three or more libraries are grouped under a single manager. Instead of serving only one library, workers rotate among all the libraries in the cluster.

As a result, some staff members may have had to drive as far as 50 miles to work at another library branch.

“They not only disagreed with the method used to create the clusters, they also disagreed with the results when the system was put into practice,” Keenan explains.

The move by the supervisors gained added momentum when Local 1857, which had passed a vote of no-confidence in King County Library System director Bill Ptacek, bargained a resolution that solved some of the problems caused by the clustering issues, says Keenan.

“The supervisors saw the repeated successes of Local 1857 and this gave them another reason to seek a voice themselves in the process, policies and procedures that impacted their jobs and which they felt they did not have,” he adds.

“What particularly upset the supervisors was that they found out about this resolution from colleagues rather than their own management.”

Now the supervisors have formed a contract committee and a constitutional bylaws committee. They also have elected interim officers.

Once the contract committee has completed its task and put together a first-time contract, they will start negotiations with the administration.