It is a long-standing tradition to call workers “heroic” during times of crisis, which has been especially prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Libraries and related institutions are not immune to this phenomenon. Leaders use the language of heroism to exploit employee labor, particularly workers in low income and/or precarious positions. Instead of acknowledging institutional failures, the spotlight shifts to the individual actions of workers who bear the brunt of consequences including feelings of guilt, burnout, and harmful working conditions. Additionally, heroism language absolves institutions from performing reciprocal actions of their own. Library and institutional leaders have praised worker resilience and heroism while slashing pay, benefits, and budgets. This lightning talk will explore language used by leaders during times of crisis and how that language serves to exploit library labor. This talk will also examine the consequences of heroism language, and discuss possibilities for new professionals to respond and organize.
Drawing from my experience returning to the ‘student labour force’ while pursuing my MLIS degree after a first career as a teacher, this lightning talk calls on fellow securely employed librarians and archivists to re-examine and reflect on our institutions’ employment and treatment of student labour. It presents some of the mechanisms by which normalizing and accepting the less-than-ideal treatment, compensation and recognition of student and other contingent labour deflates the value and quality of our entire workforce. It offers concrete ways we can try to shape working conditions to ensure that the humans who make up this ‘student labour force’ are better compensated, credited and cared for within our institutions, as one way to help recalibrate the value of our whole profession.
As a former precarious labourer in academic libraries I am now on the other side of the table of being on many (many) hiring committees to hire people into these precarious academic librarian positions. These positions are not only flawed in concept but are deeply connected to the capitalist structure of academia that requires a proof of concept to validate through temporary positions in order to, in theory, create permanent positions. The emotional, financial, and cultural labour that goes into adapting to a library environment for a short period of time is enormous; with bloated job postings and unreasonable lists of duties making success in these positions challenging. I myself have completed three term contracts before I was successful at getting a permanent position, I would like to provide some of my insight into what to ask for and about in interviews for precarious positions to determine culture, support, and scope in these positions. I will speak directly to my experience as a both a racialized person (bi-racial, Sri Lankan and English) in these spaces, as well as a former precarious employee, and as a frequent member of hiring committees. I will attempt to provide some tangible questions, strategies, and options when being interviewed for precarious positions as a racialized person (or not), as well as things to prepare for when being in a space that is dominated by white culture and white faces.
Starting over in a new career comes with high risk and the potential for new rewards, but how do these experiences map onto a field known for its precarious and limited job opportunities? Hiring committees are looking for librarians and library staff with a more diverse skill set, which makes second-career candidates attractive hires; however, a lack of previous library-specific experience creates expectations that these new hires can and will do more in their roles than compared to their first-career colleagues. What follows is an unexpected range of emotional labour for second-career librarians that could affect the formation of their new professional identity and potentially lead to early (new) career burnout. This presentation will touch on the speaker’s experience navigating library roles as a second-career librarian, and will offer tools to help second-career workers who are starting over.
With the outward rise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, BIPOC librarians are exhausted. Add in the stress of a global pandemic as well as the hypervisualization of violence against BIPOC, it’s truly an extremely difficult burden to bear. More people are asking BIPOC how to fix problems that weren’t created by them and to explain the ways in which harmful policies and practices have plagued them. These things are often asked with little to no consideration for the amount of emotional labor is required. This talk will discuss the ways in which this cycle is harmful and how putting a spotlight on the issues without doing anything about them and/or placing that labor on BIPOC library staff is counterproductive.
This lightning talk raises questions about LIS educational narratives around librarianship, labour, and professional identity, as well as the intersection of such narratives with LIS education on race and power. I will begin by outlining my own journey in coming to identify as an academic librarian and as a worker. Next, I will reflect on how LIS education has provided limited frameworks for understanding librarians, specifically as workers, within capitalism, and for making sense of the dynamics of race and power in the society we work in. Presenting on the early stages of this project, I will highlight concepts I’m working through, such as LIS education, consciousness, and racial capitalism. I posit that if we, library and archive workers, understand ourselves not as professionals, but as workers under racial capitalism, we can imagine further opportunities for radical solidarity and collective action in and outside of libraries.
In order for labor to shift power in memory institutions we must first examine our own biased organizing strategies. Join Andrea Lemoins as she discusses how she used adrienne maree brown's anti-oppression Emergent Strategy principles to organize Concerned Black Workers, an organization of union and non-union Black workers at the Free Library of Philadelphia, to fight for labor rights at their institution. The group ousted the Free Library’s director in the Summer of 2020 and continues to fight against institutional racism that their unions do not address. Concerned Black Workers represents employees across two district councils, 3 locals and those that are not yet unionized.
Hope labour means something different when you're disabled. Unstable and under-compensated work performed with the hope of a better life to come can start to look pretty hopeless if you can’t afford to move once every six months to a year or hold down two or three jobs at a time.
This talk draws on the speaker’s personal struggle to find work in his field two years after completing his MLIS and from his time with the Ontario Library Association’s MentorMatch program as both a mentee and mentor working with disabled early career librarians. It goes on to argue that advising disabled early career librarians requires an appreciation of the non-, and ir-rationality of the job search process as opposed to a clear “if you do x you will get job y” outcome that is often sold to us in library programs.
In this lightning talk, I will share my experiences and lessons learned as a union member involved in an action that generated an unexpected amount of criticism and pushback from other library workers. Though the initial reaction to the action was difficult to bear, the aftermath led to productive conversations around workplace safety, labor conditions, and the benefits of union membership that may not have happened otherwise. The unfriendly climate that existed after the letter was released also forced library union members to be more deliberate and strategic in our approach to organizing the library, which will build a stronger structure in the long term. Others interested in organizing their library workplaces in similar situations can learn from our experiences and challenges at UVA to build stronger labor structures in their institutions.
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Washington Libraries (UW Libraries) officially filed to form a new union to represent library workers across three campuses (Seattle, Bothell, & Tacoma). The UW Libraries Union brings together librarian and professional staff workers into one union.
This lightning talk will briefly discuss “the why” and “the how” behind the formation of the UW Libraries Union, including how we believe unionization efforts support our goals for a more equitable and diverse professional community. Lastly, the empathy, care, compassion, and love that goes into unionization efforts is not often centered in union or labor discussions. We will touch on how union organizing has given library workers purpose, a sense of joy, hope, and community, while working virtually and often in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shortly after completing my MLIS coursework, I told some local academic librarian pals that I applied for a librarian job at the University of Waterloo. "They're not faculty," my friend said, "and they're not unionized...but everyone I know there is really happy." Two months after that conversation, I accepted an offer from Waterloo, and learned that the matter of our employment was a subject of hot gossip among our Ontario colleagues. Three years later, I voted against librarians and archivists joining the Faculty Association at the University of Waterloo.
In this presentation, I will:
offer some clarifications about our working conditions, and describe gains made over the last five years through the collective organizing of our members;
tell the story of how my career history brought me to my NO vote;
demonstrate how our configuration of responsibilities and benefits affords me the ability and opportunity to resist and transform inequities in our workplace.