All animals are equal? Cutting across the bias--librarians and union service work

Abstract

Like traditional faculty, the workload of academic librarians typically contains some obligation of service. Service is represented through different mechanisms including committee work, involvement with professional organizations, and union participation. This last category is important: only through engaged participation by members do unions flourish. Service to one’s union can be demanding--what is asked is a high threshold but is there a commensurate reward? For traditional faculty members there exists an algebra known as release time that usually equates components of work to an equivalent of time in the classroom. When the burden of service work needs to be mitigated, release time is there to provide relief. All well and good, but what about librarians, or archivists, for that matter? Do they have mechanisms like release time to allow them to create the space in their schedules to do this service work? How can unions support librarians when librarians do not deliver classes in the same way as faculty thereby any attempts in establishing a one-to-one comparison of time is not just challenging but near impossible.

This paper will present the results of an investigation that looked at every union contract in English speaking Canada to see how, if at all, release time is articulated for librarians in contrast to what is made available for traditional faculty.