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Library staff urge board to back stable schedules during public comment
Summary
Two hourly Urbana Free Library staff told the board that current scheduling practices are "unsustainable," citing 11 of 17 desk staff who are hourly and limited to 999 hours a year, and asked the board to support consistent scheduling during union negotiations.
Callie, an hourly library assistant II at the Urbana Free Library and member of the Urbana Free Library Union Bargaining Committee, told the board during public comment that the patron services department’s current scheduling practices are “unsustainable and detrimental to the library, its staff, and most importantly, our patrons.” She said 11 of 17 library assistant II desk staff are hourly, unbenefited and limited to 999 hours per year (about 19 hours per week), which she said prevents consistent scheduling and weakens patron service.
Callie said patrons often plan visits around specific staff members and sometimes wait up to an hour or leave because the staff person they know is not scheduled. “When patrons know and trust us, we can serve them even better,” she said, urging the board to support negotiating stable schedules that allow hourly staff greater predictability and the chance to advance internally.
Dominique, a senior desk staff member with three years at the library, described wide swings in weekly hours — “I had 50 hours on it. This upcoming one will probably have 20” — and said the library’s reliance on sparse hourly schedules causes experienced employees to leave. Dominique asked the board to tell management to “open full and half-time positions and offer them first as in-house promotions,” and to stop treating hourly employees as “gap fillers.”
Board members did not take immediate action on the requests during the meeting. Later in the agenda the board voted to go into closed session under 5 ILCS 120/2 for collective negotiating matters, a step that typically precedes or accompanies bargaining-related discussion between a public body and employee representatives.
The public commenters’ requests reflected specific demands and numbers raised in the session: limits on hours for many hourly desk staff, requests for promotion pathways, and a board-level endorsement of scheduling principles to be advanced in negotiations. The board accepted the public comments into the record and proceeded with the scheduled agenda.
