OUR 590

OUR 590

HISTORY

A 25th

Anniversary

Retrospective

In February 1994 Local 590 will observe its 25^th
birthday. In anticipation of the completion of our
first quarter century of official existence I will peri-
odically be writing brief articles recalling some of
the Local’s history.

Howard Deck

Part1: We Organize

no paid medical benefits. When the absence of paid
medical benefits was pointed out to University
administrators along with the fact that some other
University employees did receive them, the admin-
istration response was "but they have a union."
Some staff members took the hint and met with the
Philadelphia Council AFL-CIO, who in turn direct-
ed them to the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers
(PFT).
The PFT, which at that time was interested in
organizing teaching assistants at the University,
agreed to charter Local 1740 as a way of establish-
ing a foothold on the campus. This Local was never
recognized by the University. but did manage to
exist and function as a pressure group that had
some success in resolving problems of individual
employees. The fact that the PFT Local was never
officially recognized by the University, however.
meant that no collective bargaining agreement was
ever negotiated and that most of the terms and con-
ditions of employment that were problematic could
never be addressed in an appropriate forum.
Meanwhile, news reached the library staff that
the American Federation of State. County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME) had come onto
campus and won the right to represent the employ-
ees of the University Dining Service (today’s Local
54).

M	embers of the University of Pennsylvania Library Staff first began to consider unionization in the middle 1960s. At that

time a Staff Association Committee which was
concerned about library salaries met with the
University’s Associate Director of Personnel to
discuss those concerns. When they asked the
Associate Director what they might do to improve
library salaries, his answer was to try Christian
prayer." Some of the members of that committee,
as well as other staff members who were informed
of that response, decided that it was unacceptable
and that they needed to begin to look beyond the
Staff Association for a way to bring their salaries
and working conditions into the Twentieth Century.
Annual salaries in the mid 1960s were some-times
as low as $2,700 and the University provided

page 2 Our 590 History

Eventually, frustrated with the PFT"s seeming
lack of commitment to organizing for recognition.
some staff members approached AFSCME District
Council 33. which expressed interest in supporting
an organizing drive in the Library system. The two
staff representatives from the District Council with
whom we worked were the late Jim Hogwood, for
whom the District Council 33 building at 3001
Walnut Street is named, and Jerry McEntee, who
is now the International President of AFSCME. They
approached the PFT which agreed to step aside in
favor of AFSCME.
In the late Spring of 1968 a serious organizing
effort was launched At that time I was working in
the Towne Scientific Library, where, like many
other employees in the departmental libraries, I had
previously been unaware of unionization efforts.

union recognition. The then Director of Personnel
for the University assured worried administrators
that our efforts would not be successful because we
were only a "small group of troublemakers."
In 1968 the University was not covered by the
National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This meant
that we were unable to approach the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) to conduct a recognition
election. Instead it was agreed that the parties
would be bound by the results of an election by
secret ballot conducted by mail by the American
Arbitration Association. The election was sched-
uled for late February of 1969.
In the interim there were a series of disputes
about which classifications were to be included in
the bargaining unit. The University, for example.
wanted to keep typists out of the bargaining unit

The expansion of the orga-
organizing drive to the entire
library system made it pos-
sible for us to establish a
network that very quickly
was able to convince
enough support staff to
sign union designee cards
for us to be able to consid-
er petitioning for recogni-
tion.
Then we were faced
with a real dilemma
because until that time we
had been attempting to

When they asked the
University’s Associate Director
of Personnel
what they might do to improve
library salaries,
his answer was to
"try Christian prayer."

Eventually these disputes
were resolved and we
moved into the final weeks
of our campaign to win
the recognition election.
At all times we kept mem-
bers informed about the
issues and went to great
lengths to point out the
inaccuracies in communi-
cations that we were
receiving from the admin-
istration. We even man-
aged to get out a timely
response to a letter from

organize both professional and support staff mem-
bers. It became clear that we were not even close to
achieving a majority of the combined groups. But
that we had a clear majority among the support
staff. This was especially troublesome to us
because some of the most active people involved in
the organizing effort, for example the late Astrid
Russell. were members of the professional staff.
After agonizing over this dilemma for a few
weeks. the activists among the professional staff
told us that they did not wish to stand in the way of
the support staffs achieving union recognition and
advised us to proceed to seek it as a bargaining unit
of support staff only
In the late Fall of 1968 District Council 33 noti-
fied the University that it represented a majority of
the support staff and had designee cards to support
that claim. The University. which had previously
always recognized unions voluntarily through card
checks. this time insisted on a representative elec-
tion. It was. of course. the first time that any group
of A3 employees at the University had sought

the Director of Libraries that employees received
only two (2) days before the mail balloting began.
Eventually the votes were counted on February
24, 1969 with the result that AFSCME won the
recognition election by a clear 2 to 1 margin. I will
never forget my supervisor at the end of that day
standing in front of my desk shaking with rage.
tears streaming down her face demanding to know
if I knew what I had done. I informed her that we
knew exactly what we were doing and that the days
of playing off individual employees against each
other were over.
The next day Jerry McEntee called me from
Washington to tell me that we had officially been
chartered by AFSCME as Local 590.

NEXT TIME -We Prepare to Negotiate

Our 590 History page 3

Part 2
We Prepare to
Negotiate

Howard Deck

Health benefits
    vacations
    Holidays
    Sick leave
    Leaves of absence
    A uniform system for performance evaluation
    Seniority and promotion
    Lunch hours and rest periods
    A temperature clause
    Work rules
    One of our most interesting issues had to do with
the Vietnam conflict. which was at its height in
1969 and which was the subject of constant campus
unrest at that time. Many of our newest members
were recent graduates who passionately opposed
American involvement in that conflict and believed
that the Union should address it.
    The proposal that evolved from our discussions
remains, word for word, in our collective bargain-
ing agreement as the third paragraph of Article XV,
Section 7. It provides that any employee who is
imprisoned for refusal to accept induction into the
armed forces of the United States shall be granted a
leave of absence for the duration of that imprison-
ment.
    I remember Jerry McEntee's delight with this
proposal, which he believed we would be able to
use throughout the negotiations to make the
University uncomfortable. Ironically, it was the
first of o u r proposals to which they agreed. The fol-
lowing year at its biennial convention, AFSCME
became the first national union to call for unilateral
withdrawal from Southeast Asia.
    While we were preparing for negotiations. We
found that many of our proposals were relatively
simple to define. Others, such as the seniority and
promotion proposal, were the subject of many
hours of discussion and went through numerous
revisions. In fact, that particular proposal also took
up more time in our actual negotiations than any
other. I will write more about it in the next article.
    Meanwhile we held several membership meet-
ings to report our progress in these preparations.
Only employees who had signed union designee
cards were considered members at that time and
they were the only people in the bargaining unit
who were eligible to attend those meetings.

E	ven before the votes were counted in our recognition election. January 1969, the organizing committee had begun preparing

to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
Some of us were busy reviewing other collective
bargaining agreements and doing research about
issues that we wanted to address in our first con-
tract.
Jerry McEntee, who is currently our
International President, continued to be the District
Council 33 Staff Representative assigned to us.
Immediately after the election results were certified
he instructed the organizing committee to elect
temporary officers. They were:
    Howard Deck, President
    Marilyn Horen, Vice-President
    Jim Hart. Treasurer
    Harvey Sudler, Secretary
    Peter Harris,
    Wendy Hawkins, and
    Hattie Murray,
    Executive Board Members
   We began to meet on a frequent and regular
basis to finish preparing our proposals for a collec-
tive bargaining agreement with the University.
    Our first task was to identify those issues that we
believed needed to be addressed in the contract.
Initially, they were:
    A classification system
    A uniform pay plan
    Job descriptions
    Union security
    A grievance procedure
    A uniform discipline and discharge procedure
    Hours of work and overtime

Page 4 Our 590 History

One of the controversial issues during the orga-
nizing campaign was union security: that is,
whether or not members of the bargaining unit
would have to become members of the union as a
condition of employment. The University falsely
claimed that if the Union won the election, manda-
tory union membership would be the automatic
result. The Union organizing committee consistent-
ly took the position that the University’s assertion
was untruthful at best, since the entire issue of
union security would be negotiable.

Wounded and damaged though
we were...

In our meetings preparing for negotiations. It
became clear very quickly that the organizing com-
mittee was unanimous in supporting a “union shop”
clause that would require everyone represented by
the Union and receiving full contractual benefits to
be a member of the Union.

Finally. after about two months of preparation,
we completed our proposals and called a member-
ship meeting in order to have them ratified. With
very little discussion. almost no modification and a
great deal of enthusiasm. the membership ratified
the proposals and we asked Jerry McEntee to notify
the University that we were ready to commence
negotiations.

Within a few days the enthusiasm and optimism
that characterized the general membership meeting
were dampened by our first experience dealing with
an internal enemy. A small group of employees,
with the knowledge and encouragement of the
administration, began circulating a petition protest-
ing the Union security proposal that the member-
ship had ratified. Some of this small group had 4
actually voted for the proposal, and before we even
sat down at the bargaining table they created a pub-
lic display of division within the Local.

The negotiating committee remained adamant
that it would not accept a contract that included a
provision for “free-loaders.” We discussed the pos-
sibility of ignoring the petition effort, but conclud-
ed that enough damage had already been done that
we needed to call a general membership meeting in
order to allow the membership the opportunity to
reconsider the union security proposal. We were
confidant that if we did so our original position
would prevail.

The largely one-sided debate at the meeting
made it immediately apparent that the membership
overwhelmingly favored the original committee
proposal. The highlight of the discussion came
when a member still with us rose to complain bit-
terly about the fact that she had been tricked into
signing the petition and stated that "if those people
don’t want to support this union, their ass can
starve.” The motion to reconsider was resoundingly
defeated.

That wasn’t the end of it, of course. Wounded
and damaged though we were, we remained on
track with our agenda to complete the negotiations
of our first contract by the summer. The damage
done by the “fifth columnists” followed us to the
bargaining table. The union security issue was a
thorny one and the administration “ever hesitated
to remind us, as snidely as possible. of our internal

The internal enemy is a
dangerous one,
the one that can damage us the
most.

battle over it. Eventually we succeeded, of course,
but the negotiations would have been a lot swifter
and a lot easier had we not been through the unfor-
tunate experience. On the other hand, from that
experience we learned an important lesson. The
internal enemy is a dangerous one. the one that can
damage us the most.

Next time: The First Negotiations.

Our 590 History Page 5

Part 3
The First
Negotiations

Howard Deck

result was the first version of the temperature
clause that appears now in Article XXIII, Section
10 of our Collective Bargaining Agreement.
    Prior to our first contract, the University had no
organized system for evaluating employees’
work. During the negotiations they put forth a
proposal for annual reviews of performance. As
well as probationary reviews for new employees
and employees who might be promoted. That pro-
posal was a matter of considerable concern to
Union negotiators because it would have given
supervisors new discretionary powers to control
both the salaries and the eligibility for transfers
and promotions of the employees who worked for
them. A number of supervisors had already
demonstrated that they could not be trusted to use
such authority objectively.
    The Union took the position that reviews
should evaluate employees in three areas of their
work (quantity, quality, and the ability to work
with others) and that employees should be rated
as either "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory." With
any supervisory remarks included in an evaluation
limited to the justification of an unsatisfactory rat-
ing. After countless discussions of this issue, the
Union’s position eventually prevailed.
    After only a few negotiating sessions, it
became clear that the University negotiators were
unprepared for the militancy of the Union nego-
tiators and. most especially. for our ability to sup-
port our arguments with examples of specific
problems in the library system as well as contrac-
tual provisions that addressed those problems in
other collective bargaining agreements.

O	ur victory in the recognition election in February 1969 was only a milepost on the long road to our goal: a contract

reflecting the priorities that library workers had
set for themselves. On May 1st of 1969 we finally
met the University across the bargaining table for
the first time.
At that meeting we exchanged contract propos-
als. The Union’s proposals had been developed
with a lot of hard work during the weeks between
the election and that first session. The
University’s proposals were punitive and regres-
sive. They took away o u r status as A-3 employ-
ees, with the result that our work week was
increased from thirty-five to forty hours. We
would have lost the reduction in hours for the
summer and the special Christmas vacation week
that we had previously enjoyed. Their proposals
also failed to address our economic concerns and
would have perpetuated the inequities that were a
major issue during our organizing campaign.
When we returned to the table for our second
meeting, we informed the University that we
would not negotiate from their proposals and

returned them to the
University negotiators. At the
same time, we insisted on
negotiating from the Union’s
proposals. The University
negotiators unhappily agreed
to do so.
It became clear very early
that our major differences

The University's proposals were
punitive and regressive They
took away our status as A-3
employees...

Eventually, there
was a hiatus in the
negotiations so that
the University nego-
tiators could regroup
and reassess their
position.
When we returned
to the table, the

with the University were in non-economic areas.
Many hours were spent arguing about the Union’s
proposal to allow employees to take leaves of
absence. The University wanted to retain absolute
discretion about granting leave requests and.
incredibly, they adamantly refused even to dis-
cuss maternity leaves. Time off for classes was
another idea to which the University was surpris-
ingly resistant.
Working conditions during the summer
months were often intolerable in many of the
University Libraries. A great deal of time was
devoted to this issue during negotiations. The

University had expanded its team and seemed
prepared to respond to Union demands that it had
previously attempted to ignore. There was quick
agreement about personal leave. maternity leave,
and time off for educational purposes The thorni-
est and most difficult issue remaining before us in
those first negotiations was the Union’s proposal
concerning seniority and promotions. Prior to our
first contract the University did not post vacancies
in the library system and rarely promoted from
within. Most jobs were filled from the outside,
which meant there was little or no stability in the
support staff. The annual support staff turnover

Page 6 Our 590 History

Rate at that time was 65%. Our goal was to create a
stable staff by providing our members with an
incentive to stay in the system.
At first the University’s argument against our
proposal was largely based on their fear that they
would be forced to promote unqualified employees.
The Union made numerous modifications to its pro-
posal in order to address those concerns that we
believed had some legitimacy. We acknowledged
that certain jobs requiring special language or sub-
ject skills should be placed outside the lines of
seniority. We also proposed that employees who
were promoted based on their seniority should be
evaluated objectively at the end of a probationary
period. Our principle was that employees who
believed that they were able to perform in a posi-
tion to which they might be promoted should have
the opportunity to demonstrate that they were able
to do so. In addition, we proposed that employees’

Jerry McEntee told me that our
new agreement was the best
"first contract" that he had ever
seen

actual seniority based on their length of service
should be weighted to credit them with additional
time based on their experience in public service vs.
technical processing jobs, depending on which cat-
egory the job for which they were bidding fell.
Even with all these creative proposals from the
Union, the administration remained resistant to our
whole concept of posting vacancies and filling
them from within in an objective manner.
Eventually it became clear that their real concern
was the loss of control that would result from the
implementation of the Union’s proposal. This con-
cern reflected the attitudes of many supervisors
who had operated for years without being account-
able. The University was not only resisting our
method for promoting employees, but also holding
firm against any mobility for employees to transfer
laterally into vacancies in job categories in which
they were already working.
In our minds we could relate their stubbornness
only to the attitudes of supervisors who. during our
organizing campaign, had told employees that if
they did not like working in the University of
Pennsylvania Libraries perhaps they should leave.
Some supervisors had actually threatened to pre-
vent employees from transferring into other posi-

	tions and to make their lives miserable while work- ing under their supervision. The deadlock over this issue was broken only after Jerry McEntee informed University negotiators that if they did not change their position, the Union would take a strike vote. Eventually, after many more hours of discussion. reason prevailed and we reached agreement over the original version of Article VII of our collective bar- gaining agreement. With the seniority and promo- tion issue resolved we were able to move on to the final phase of negotiations, which dealt with eco- nomics and another very thorny issue-union secu- rity. I have already written about our internal snuggle over the union security issue. When we reached the negotiating table, the Union’s team was united in our insistence that anyone working in a Union-rep- resented position would have to maintain member- ship in the Union as a condition of employment. We were determined that there should be no free- loaders, since the terms and conditions of our col- lective bargaining agreement would apply to every- one. The University resisted this demand and expressed its fear that employees who had already indicated they would resign rather than join the Union would all be forced out of their jobs as soon as we had completed negotiations. At the very end of our negotiations, the Union proposed that for the first ten months of the con- tract employees who did not wish to join the Union could pay an agency fee equivalent to Union dues,
	The First Negotiating Team: Howard Deck Kenneth Graitzer. alternate Peter Harris Wendy Hawkins Marilyn Horen Hattie Murray Harvey Sudler
	but that at the end of those ten months, everyone would be required to become a Union member. The University reluctantly agreed, and by the end of those ten months everyone had joined the Union. The economic negotiations, while hardly easy, were at least less complicated and more straightfor- ward than the non-economic ones. We achieved our goal of a uniform pay scale that would give every-

Our 590 History Page 7

one a raise. As a result, some members received
immediate increases of as much as $2,700 annual-
ly. In addition to the across-the-board raises other
increases were negotiated to occur during the life of
the contract through the Union’s creation of the
unit-of-service steps as well as the career advance-
ment promotions (e.g.. Library Clerk to Senior
Library Clerk. LSA I and BA I to LSA II and BA II,
etc.).
    We were successful in negotiating three annual
personal leave days (there were none before) and
increased vacation time, which meant that employ-
ees began to receive twenty days vacation after
three years rather than the previous twenty years.
We also achieved tuition reimbursement for mem-
bers taking courses in Library Science at the (then)
Drexel Institute of Technology. Perhaps most
important of all was o u r success in getting the
University to provide paid employee medical insur-
ance for the first time. (Family coverage followed a
year later in the second contract.)
    Early in July 1969 we finally came to a tentative
agreement with the University. Joan Gotwals from
the University’s negotiating team and I agreed to
divide the task of writing the contract language that
would reflect our agreements. Union members rap-
turously and unanimously approved the first con-
tract at a ratification meeting in July and our first
collective bargaining agreement was put into effect.
retroactive to May 1, 1969.
    I cannot emphasize enough the significance of
the presence of Jerry McEntee now our
International President, as a member of our first
negotiating team. He. along with Jim Hogwood
from District Council 33, provided us with invalu-
able advice and guidance and treated us with more
patience and respect than we probably deserved.
Jerry told me that our new agreement was the best
"first contract" that he had ever seen, and that is
confirmed by the fact that the International Union’s
Research Department has sent it out as a sample
model contract ever since 1969.
    So we had achieved our goal, but our euphoria
was short-lived. The first contract was for only one
year, so we knew we would be back in negotiations
in nine months: and we immediately began to expe-
rience serious problems with the implementation of
the new collective bargaining agreement.

Next: Implementing and enforcing the first
contract

	Part 4 Our New Trial
	T	here was no time to sit back and contemplate our success after we signed our first contract with the University in July 1969. For the
	next several months, our original Executive Board operated in a crisis mode. Not surprisingly, the first major crisis involved the same issue that troubled those original negotiations for so long-promo- tions Less than a week after we signed the first agree- ment, I met with the Assistant to the Director of Libraries to discuss how we would implement the posting and selection procedure of Article VII of our contract. One of the first vacancies to be posted was for a Bibliographic Assistant in the Annenberg School Library. That position had been vacant for a long time. and filling it quickly was considered urgent because a new Librarian was about to tie over in that Library. When the posting period was over and all the seniority calculations had been completed, the most senior applicant turned out to be James Gray (cur- rently our Local Union Treasurer), who was then a Library Clerk in the Biddle Law Library. Jim went to an interview with the new Annenberg Librarian and told us afterwards that he intended to accept the job. He so informed the library administration and we thought that the only matter remaining to be decided was his starting date. After some time, it came to my attention that Jim did not have a starting date and that his Library Clerk position had not been posted as a vacancy. When I inquired about the delay, I got an evasive answer. I continued to press my inquiry and was finally told that the new Annenberg Librarian had decided that she really didn’t want a Bibliographic Assistant, that the position really required a Bibliographic Specialist and that, therefore, it was to be reclassified. This, of course, would have meant that the new Annenberg Librarian could choose to hire any member of the bargaining unit-or. more likely, to hire someone from outside the library system. This blatant attempt to subvert the process that we had negotiated created outrage throughout the Local. A grievance was immediate- ly filed. The Executive Board, which clearly recognized the seriousness of this challenge, decided that bold action in addition to the grievance was necessary.

Page 8 Our 590 History

fter some discussion we decided lo ask Jim (who
was not yet a member of the Board) if he would be
willing to report. to work at Annenberg even though
the Librarian there refused to acknowledge that he
should be doing so.

. . . to call a General Membership
meeting of Local 590 and to take
a strike vote because of the
University's attempt to subvert
our collective
bargaining agreement.

    Jim immediately embraced this suggestion and
the following Monday reported to work at
Annenberg. That courageous act alone created a sig-
nificant uproar and forced the library administration
and the Dean of the Annenberg School to admit that
they were supporting the Librarian in her effort to
avoid the terms and conditions of Article VII.
    In order to demonstrate our support of Jim,
dozens of Local 590 members regularly called and
visited him there. to the ever increasing anger of
the Librarian. (She later referred to the Union as a
fascist organization.)
    When we finally had the grievance heard at the
third level, we asked Charlie Dade and Ronald
Smith, the President and Secretary-Treasurer of
District Council 33, to join us for that hearing.
They readily agreed. In those days, the hearing offi-
cer at the third step in our grievance procedure was
the University’s Business Manager. John Keyes. I
attended the hearing along with Jim and several
members of the Executive Board. The University
was represented by members of the Library admin-
istration the Annenberg Librarian. and the Dean of
the Annenberg School.
    It was clear to me that the representatives of the
Library administration were distinctly uncomfort-
able with the circumstances in which the Annenberg
people had placed them. They did. however. contin-
ue to claim that they had the right to reclassify the
job. even though it had been posted as a vacancy.
The hexing was a heated one. There were several
caucuses of the University representatives with the
Business Manager. Eventually, they returned to pro-
pose a compromise: Jim would stay and work in the
Annenberg Library while the question of whether or
not the job needed to be reclassified was submitted
to an arbitrator who would make a final and binding
decision.

It didn’t take us long to recognize that if we
accepted that proposal, we would be giving up the
very language for which we had fought so long and
hard in our negotiations. Without prompting,
Charlie Dade rose from his chair and turned in my
direction. He instructed me to call a General
Membership meeting of Local 590 and to take a
strike vote because of the University’s attempt to
subvert our collective bargaining agreement. It was
a dramatic and important moment in our history.
    The Business Manager of the University imme-
diately asked for another caucus. When he and the
other University representatives returned to the
room, they informed us that they would no longer
be attempting to reclassify Jim’s new job and that
he would be paid at his new rate retroactive to the
day he first reported to Annenberg. When we rene-
gotiated the contract, less than a year later, lan-
guage was added that prevents any position that has
been posted as a vacancy from being proposed for
reclassification.
    We survived this early challenge because we
were both militant and forthright. The Executive
Board and the membership had cause for great sat-
isfaction in this victory, but like many of our victo-
ries it would not have been possible were it nor for
the individual courage and determination of one
member. Jim Gray bad been our star recruiter in the
Biddle Law Library during the organizing days.
During the prolonged and difficult period of our
negotiations he had helped to keep membership
interest and support for the process both organized
and vocal. When he became the focus of this early
crisis, he handled himself with singular courage
and dignity. Who knows what might have hap-
pened had the Local failed this first test?
    That we turned this cynical challenge into a vic-
tory is as much to Jim’s credit as to the Local's.

OUR 590 HISTORY: A
25th Anniversary
Retrospective

is reprinted from

Local 590 AFSCME Newsletter
which is the official publication of the Executive
Board of Local590 AFSCME—AFL-CIO
University of Pennsylvania Library Employees

Editor……………………………………...John Hogan
Typesetting…………………………….…Bill Jameson