The American Federation of Teachers on behalf of UC librarians will continue a series of talks with the university administration regarding salary increases next month, following a set of negotiations Jan. 9 that failed to satisfy the union’s demands.
‘Several points were made earlier this month,’ chief negotiator for UC librarians Mike Rotkin said. ‘Once again, we have demonstrated extensively to the administration that University of California librarians are tens of thousands of dollars behind their [California State University], [community college] and public library counterparts in terms of salaries. However, we have now reduced our demands, lowering our salary expectations by 10K for our top-tier librarians.’
Rotkin said that while the university continues to receive budget cuts and the state remains in a deficit, the university sits on approximately $6 billion in unrestricted assets that could be used to pay UC librarians a total of $5 million in salary increases annually.
‘It’s not a matter of if we have the money or not,’ Rotkin said. ‘It’s a matter of priorities. The university has already allocated salary increases for university police, legal council, executives and members of AFSCME ‘mdash; the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees ‘mdash; so why not us?’
So far, the university has offered its librarians a 1 percent increase in professional development funds. University negotiators, following the latest round of talks earlier this month, have agreed to seek an increased salary offer from the university by this February.
‘UC librarians maintain research resources essential to any research university, updating data on the Internet, digitalizing resources and specializing in specific areas of study ‘mdash; ranging from romantic poetry to African-American history ‘mdash; so that they can make available the most contemporary and current resources to researchers in their specific fields,’ UC Santa Cruz librarian Ken Ryans said. ‘If the UC continues to provide lower salaries than those offered at competing institutions, I think we will eventually see a demise in the educational quality and research capabilities of the university.’
Rotkin said that in the past, university librarians have never been this mobilized and demanding.
‘They don’t go on strike and they don’t rattle cages, but for the first time I think that we are a bit more organized and mobilized, especially with the union buttons, T-shirts, letters and demonstrations ‘mdash; it’s nice to see them speaking up,’ Rotkin said. ‘We only number around 400 librarians in the entire UC system, so with our small numbers, we inevitably have less clout when demanding things like salary renegotiations. The UC has promised pay increases over the past five years, but so far we have only experienced 2 percent annual raises over three of the last five years, and 0 percent raises over the other two.’
Rotkin said that the university has neglected to perform exit interviews for
those librarians who decided to leave over the past decade, allegedly leaving the university unaware of growing problems in recruitment and retention that have resulted from inequitable salaries between UC librarians and their counterparts at other educational institutions.
‘The trouble we are currently experiencing in filling librarian positions among university campuses is due to increased awareness by librarians that the UC system is no longer paying as well as the CSU system or many community colleges,’ Ryans said. ‘I have seen colleagues leave positions at the University of California to take up positions offered at local state universities and community colleges because they pay significantly better. There is absolutely no incentive for librarians to work at the University of California if competing educational institutions within the same vicinity offer better pay and compensations.’
UC-AFT negotiators have arranged to meet with university representatives again next month in hopes of expanding on the university’s current offer of a 1 percent increase to professional development funds.
According to Rotkin, UC negotiators have emphasized that an increase in librarian salaries is simply not a priority for the university at the present time.
However, UC spokesman Paul Schwartz emphasized that the university is willing to continue negotiations in hopes of better addressing UC-AFT demands.
‘While I cannot comment on the specifics of these past negotiations, the university does recognize the vital role librarians serve in fulfilling its commitments to academic research and development,’ Schwartz said. ‘We will further pursue negotiations in an attempt to better address the demands presented by UC-AFT.’
Readers can contact Deepak Seeni at [email protected].