Sticking to the Union? A Study on the Unionization of Academic Law Libraries

摘要

1 In 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reportedly mused, "If I had to work in a factory, the first thing I'd do is join a union."1 It's no wonder FDR expressed such a pro-union sentiment: abusive practices by employers ran rampant throughout the country, and unionization provided much needed bargaining power and protection for vulnerable workers. Luckily, for those of us in law librari-anship, our profession has rarely needed the protections that aggressive unioniza-tion offers. But in 1972, Oscar M. Trelles studied a new trend among law school libraries: unionization. He focused mainly on labor laws and whether libraries (both public and private) were then legally able to unionize. Since Trelles's article, nearly nothing has been published on unionization in law libraries. Anecdotally, however, there has long been talk about the effects of unions on job performance and library administration. There has also been speculation about the possibilities of the growth of unionization in academic law libraries, given the fact that job insecurity and little to no annual pay raises have become quite normal in many law school libraries due to the downturn in law school and university budgets, also resulting in staff terminations and other practices that reduce salaries and add extra duties to ever shrinking staffs.