Facts About Forming a Union
MCPL WORKERS
- MCPL workers would become members of AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 1.4 million professionals across the country. Some 20,000 library employees are AFSCME members, including those who work at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
- According to MCPL staff members conducting a poll, more MCPL employees are in favor of forming a union than oppose it. We are working to provide more information about joining the union to many more workers who are still undecided.
- MCPL staff members have decided to begin the formal process of gaining union recognition. An activist group of our employees meets biweekly to plan the required steps to move the process forward. A resolution for union recognition has been given to the MCPL Board of Trustees for approval.
- To support our union you need to sign a confidential authorization card that verifies your interest in having a union. You can get one of these blue cards from any member of the organizing committee. The cards go to a 3rd party for verification and are completely confidential.
- When a majority of MCPL staff sign a blue authorization card, your organizing committee at MCPL will request that the Library Board recognize the union as an official bargaining unit. If the board recognizes our union, employees meet, elect union officers to move our union forward, and prepare a proposal to negotiate wages, working conditions and benefits for MCPL workers.
- Once the board recognizes our union, a union dues structure is established to support negotiations and the development of an MCPL local union charter.
- MCPL employees want to form a union to have the power to bargain collectively for our wages, working conditions and benefits. Currently, employees have no part in deciding policies or pay.
- By organizing a union, we want to take part in deciding our future. A union will give us the right to negotiate a legally binding contract with the MCPL that will secure the pay, working conditions and benefits that we now have, and allow us the ability to negotiate to improve them in the future.
- Paying union dues is your choice, but to stay strong as a unit we encourage that you do. In the public sector you are not required to become a dues paying member of our union. A “fair share” that is required for non-dues paying members to subsidize negotiations for better pay, working conditions and benefits might be required if it is negotiated in our union contract and you vote “yes” to ratify that contract. There are NO dues until you have a contract.
- Co-workers elected by us—MCPL employees—will represent us at the bargaining table. We all will take part in deciding, through surveys and open meetings, what items we want negotiated in any contract talks with the Library Board. AFSCME will provide us with any guidance or technical support we need.
- We get a legally binding contract when a majority of us vote to accept a proposed agreement and it is ratified by the MCPL Library Board. Our elected local union leaders and a network of stewards then see to it that the contract is enforced.
- Once we have our union in place, all union members have the right and responsibility to make the union a bigger, better and stronger organization.