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Librarians march on City Hall

Toronto Public Library workers were settling in for an indefinite work stoppage Monday, after union leaders declared an impasse in labour negotiations and called a strike Sunday evening.

With all 98 branches across the city closed, hundreds of library employees and their supporters rallied in front of City Hall Monday morning to spread the message that they are not only striking to save their jobs, but to protect public services they claim Rob Ford’s administration is bent on shrinking.

“It’s not a regular round of collective bargaining,” CUPE Local 4948 president Maureen O’Reilly told the crowd of roughly 500 people. “We’re standing up for services in the city of Toronto. Torontonians deserve to have their library service.”

The major point of contention in negotiations is job security for part-time employees, who make up more than half of CUPE 4948’s 2,300-strong membership. Union members say the library board is attempting to eliminate job security provisions for anyone with less than 15 years of service.

Under the terms of the collective agreement that expired at the end of last year, both part-time and full-time workers were protected from layoffs due to privatization or technological changes.

O’Reilly warns that if job security provisions are lost, any resulting layoffs will inevitably lead to branch closures.

“They’re looking to open up our contract to let more than half the library workers go,” she told reporters after addressing the crowd. “You have to ask yourself why they want to do this, and the only reason they want to do this is to get rid of library workers and close libraries.”

But speaking to CBC radio Monday morning, board chair and close Ford ally Councillor Paul Ainslie accused O’Reilly of “fear-mongering” and denied there is a hidden agenda to shut branches.

“We’ve never laid off a librarian. We have no intentions of laying off a librarian, we have no intention of closing library branches, we have no intention of privatizing library branches,” he said.

He didn’t however dispute O’Reilly’s assertion that the board is trying to make it easier to lay off employees.

“Any contract, you should be able to lay people off if you don’t have the volume of work there,” he said.

Melissa Kitazaki, one of the workers who took to the picket line Monday, says the library system is already stretched to a breaking point after budget cuts and the elimination of 107 employee positions in the 2012 budget. At the Victoria Village library where she works there are typically only two or three employees on duty.

Kitazaki said she has worked at the TPL for 10 years, but competition for a full-time position is so fierce that she’s applied over 200 times and is still stuck working part-time. She’s frustrated that the board has cut the number of full-time spots and fears she’ll never be able make a career of working at the library.

“This is what I want to do,” she says. “I love public service, I want to have this job for life.”

No talks are currently scheduled but both the board and the union say they are willing to return to the table.

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