Individual and Collective Action: Advocating for Academic Librarians’ Rights from Within and Outside of the Bargaining Unit

Abstract

Most academic librarians working in the postsecondary sector in Canada and the United States today hold faculty status appointments and are represented by their campus faculty association (i.e., they are unionized). In some settings, librarians and archivists are included in the same collective bargaining unit as teaching and research faculty, while in others, information workers have their own bargaining unit. Still yet, there are campuses where librarians are not recognized as academic staff, and as such, they must actively advocate to win the rights and recognition that most of their peers who are employed at other college and university campuses in North America enjoy. This advocacy work takes place at both the individual and collective levels. 

The following case study explores the experiences of one Canadian and one American academic librarian who each offer their own, distinct perspectives of having held faculty status librarian appointments with permanence (i.e., tenure or continuing appointment) as well as appointments as academic library administrators, roles where librarians typically relinquish, formally and informally, their active membership in and representation by the faculty association and/or collective bargaining unit.

Reflections shared will include: perspectives gained on collective action, having directly participated in labour action (e.g., a librarian and archivist strike) and collective labour advocacy work in the North American context; considerations for leaving, be it temporarily or permanently, a tenured librarian appointment for a library administrative post outside of the union (e.g., improved individual compensation, striving to improve individual and collective working conditions for librarians from within the leadership ranks) and the costs of doing so (e.g., relinquishing faculty status and its associated rights and responsibilities, including academic freedom and a workload that formally recognizes research and service work); and finally, the knowledge gained and insight gleaned after having returned to the privileged position of a faculty status librarian appointment with permanence.

Arising out of this case study, strategies will be offered to help academic librarians resist corporate practices that erode their individual and collective autonomy and employment stability, and which are misaligned with academic librarians’ core professional values. The experiences of these two librarians, who have each engaged in advocacy work from both within and outside of the collective bargaining unit, will be explored in relation to the wider context of collective action, unionisation, and the overall employment conditions of information workers in Canada and the United States.