Please forward this message!
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On September 29th, the management of the New York Public Library refused to honor an offer they made to its professional staff to raise wages by 15%. (The details of the reneg are more or less accurately described in an article written by Steve Greenhouse in the September 17th New York Times. http://www.local1930.org/inthenews.html) We librarians, members of AFSCME Local 1930, District Council 37, now find ourselves in the position of forcing the Library to make good on this deal by taking to the streets. The issue is fundamental: we cannot live on our wages. As a result, public librarians have been leaving the system in droves. Meanwhile, the president of the Library, Dr. Paul Le Clerc, earns over $400,000 a year, plus a nearly $100,000 housing allowance. His assistant and the vice president of Human Resources--a triumvirate of non-librarians--each make over $100,000 a year. We are disgusted by this level of greed and irresponsibility.
If you live in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island or Brooklyn, this is YOUR issue, too. We need you to march with us, and with our brothers and sisters from the Brooklyn and Queens Library Guilds, on October 12th as the Library's donors celebrate the opening of a major exhibit, "Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World"
Help us to make sure the irony of this title is not lost on Library management.
Christine Karatnytsky Executive Board AFSCME Local 1930 New York Public Library Guild http://www.local1930.org/ ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.