400 library pages join Council 2

A NEW CHAPTER has been written at the King County Library System.

Some 400 pages who work in the system have joined their colleagues and also become members of Council 2, meaning that almost all the non-management workers in the library system have now joined the union.

The movement to unionize began in December 2006 when a number of the pages expressed an interest in joining the union.

They had seen the benefits enjoyed by the other 550 library workers after they joined the union nearly six years ago. They had many issues they felt needed to be addressed. So they wanted in, too.

Council 2 staff sprung into action.

“We formed an organizing committee and began campaigning for potential members to sign authorization cards,” says Bill Keenan, Council 2 director of organizing. “The law requires that 30 percent of workers sign cards to call for an election. But our goal was to set up a comfortable margin and have a greater percentage of pages sign cards.”

Because the union cannot campaign in the libraries themselves, the organizing committee set up tables in the parking lots outside the branches where they sought to speak with pages as they reported for work. They bought an awning to cover the tables and afford protection from the rain. And they set out an ice chest, lunch snacks and afscme-green balloons to attract attention.

They published two flyers over several months to help get the message across.

One of the flyers issued by Council 2 to acquaint pages with the benefits of joining a union. Those pictured — all pages whowork in the King County Library Sysem — are, from left, Eileen Huynh, Wanda Dummitt, Karen Russell, Colleen Rappé, Susan Allen, Mary Anne Kruse and Teresa Mallare. Click here to view a larger image of this flyer.

In addition, the organizing committee held regular monthly meetings at pizza places throughout the district to plan their next moves.

“The committee members faced numerous obstacles,” Keenan explains. “They had to try to figure out when the pages would arrive and leave as they were on three different shifts. They had to try to reach as many of the 42 branches as they could. They also had to work during one of the harshest winters that the Pacific Northwest has experienced in recent memory.

“But we were pleased to have a large group of volunteers who visited most of the branches over a year and bravely endured the worst of what the weather threw at them.”

Once enough authorization card signatures had been obtained from the pages, Council 2 filed a petition on April 22, 2008 with the Public Employment Relations Commission (perc) who set up the election procedure. Ballots were sent to each employee’s home address.

The ballots were counted on June 19, 2008. The result: 142-58 in favor of joining Council 2, a margin of about two-to-one. The outcome handily met the legal requirements of 50 percent plus one vote.

On July 7, the pages were certified as an official bargaining unit represented by Council 2.

“At the first general membership meeting on July 18, those in attendance agreed it would be best to attempt to merge this new group with the existing Local 1857,” Keenan says. “In order to make that occur, both Local 1857’s existing members and the new page groups will have to agree. If that is approved, the King County Library System will need to agree to the merger to take place. If they don’t agree, the issue will go to perc for a formal hearing and a decision.”

The pages have formed a contract committee that will need to negotiate an addendum to existing contracts should the merger be approved.

Keenan praises Susan Allen, a page at the Bellevue library, the largest branch in the King County Library System, for the effort she put into signing up her fellow pages and in coordinating the campaign. “Without her work, this never would have happened,” he says. “She put a tremendous amount of energy and resources into the campaign.”