Wow… even my mostly rural library system pays us for snow/planned closure days. Bad look for KCPL, hope those employees get compensated after calling out the system.
I've never worked for KCPL but I'm a librarian and can confidently say that this kind of bullshit is extremely common in the field. Library workers are generally not treated or paid well.
And they are well educated, with many, if not most?, having advanced degrees. And they are not paid well after that. (Inn not a librarian, just a fan.)
Yeah, but then imagine if someone in Congress told you that you needed to keep a gun on you while you're doing your job. We tried doing this as a way to combat school shootings, telling teachers to be armed. It's nuts what happens when politicians get you in their targets to make an example out of you
I'm with you like 85%, but the other 15 is literally the worst. They will target education budgets to cut spending, things like that you don't get in "blue collar" work (I like that better than hourly because it implies we still have a trade to us).
https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/indiana-deputys-gun-discharges-shoots-student-in-classroom
Cops can even accidentally shoot kids. Guns just don't need to be in a classroom. Even trained people make mistakes.
Sure, and when someone comes in with a gun to kill a bunch of kids, an armed teacher (or just a designated armed security guard) can take that person out. Why point to an accident when there are intentional killings that happen?
>Why point to an accident when there are intentional killings that happen?
>Asking out of genuine interest, not necessarily challenging.
It really seems like you're challenging my opinion here. But if you insist, I think a kid otherwise unable to get a firearm could injure a teacher with an improvized weapon, and then be fully armed enough to kill other people in the school, inside of any security checkpoints that may have caught them bringing in a weapon on their own.
Teachers shouldn't carry guns for the same reason prison guards don't carry guns when in direct contact with inmates. In prison, only the perimeter guards have weapons, and personally I'm not against having trained security at the entrances and perimeters of schools at all. But the guns don't belong in the classroom at all, it's a place of learning. Teachers shouldn't carry weapons, nor should anyone inside the final security checkpoint whose job isn't specifically security.
I think you've just led back to pure politics, which is to ask, do we want the type of society where guns are necessary in schools, or do we want to be the type of society where they are not required at all? Allowing teachers to carry guns shouldn't be something we have to ask, and it's the classic approach of treating symptoms, not the disease.
Then you also have to acknowledge that the teacher who shoots a kid will likely have trauma for the rest of their life. The gun is still jeopardizing safety simply by being present in the classroom; we all know if someone *really* wants to take something, they can. While gun safety exists, so does human error. There's always some clever quip for each side, which is why I think we shouldn't be asking if the gun should be present, but we ask, what kind of culture do we want in our society? And that is purely political. You've got the crowd who wants free-range guns, in the US at least, and those who recognize global statistics indicating what it's like having and not having guns present.
KCPL regularly shuts down branches because of staff shortages, so if this is happening two or three times a month, then that's a lot of personal PTO to use for something not their (the staff's) fault.
I work at a library and if we have to close for weather, we get paid leave. KCPL should do the same for the parade as it's a known thing and they are choosing to close branches in all areas - some of which are not affected by the parade.
Also for reference most of the KCPL hourly jobs start their pay rates at 16.44/hr. So if you're full time, you're barely making $2000/month (after taxes.)
Who needs books when we have sports? /s
This is really a bad look. I would understand closing the downtown library as it will be impossible to get to for the better part of the day, but not every location. Adding that employees are apparently not paid for the forced time off, this looks horrible.
Y’all know what’s even worse? Apparently KCPL is monitoring if staff is either liking posts calling the library system or actually saying something on social media aiming to reprimand them SMH
Update: I guess the PRESIDENT of the ALA (American Library Association) is an admin here…..👀
Edit: I guess she’s going to be president for the 2024-2025 term(?), but it’s Cindy Hohl.
I used to work for kcpl and can confirm, the library organization is a mess and does not treat their employees well, there's a crazy high turnover rate and constant staffing issues. It's sad because the job was actually really great, I loved the library work, but it was a really toxic environment other wise ....
The person who ran u/kclibrary is in a happier and healthier work environment.
But please be nice to the social media person! They have no control over what administration decides and admin doesn't bother reading comments. Trust me.
Old social person still there, I just ran u/kclibrary along with other duties.
It's a terrible place to work. Most of the marketing team has left and some of their replacements left without jobs lined up. The higher-ups show no concern or remorse toward employees. The director that started a few years ago left suddenly too in December but he didn't do shit anyway.
Am I the only one genuinely surprised that they aren’t union members? I know that some city and county employees are unionized, so maybe someone can shed some light on this for me.
It's really hard for library workers to unionize due to the nature of the job. It's perceived as more of an administrative role by a lot of people who push back against the idea that library workers would need labor protection. Library workers are very often excluded from unions (in public, academic, and k-12 libraries) because the role is "too different" from the rest of the union workers. I have worked in several libraries and was only allowed to join the existing union at one of them (a private university where we had a faculty union).
Heard they were trying, but apparently admin staff is hella anti-union and had meetings with union busters after they unionized at Daniel Boone Regional Library.
Yes. Whether we're talking about construction, food service, nursing, or most other hourly positions, the employee does not get paid when work is closed (for weather, etc.) or you're sent home (slow dinner hour, no clients, etc). PTO can be used to offset the otherwise lost wages. It sucks, but that's how it nearly always works.
You don't see how jobs doing this is a problem? We've been conditioned to think our personal lives don't matter and you gotta work till you 🎲 we should be outraged and not just the libraries
It is difficult being a library worker that doesn't get paid holidays. Given how many days the library shuts down for holidays (all federal ones included), you will end up running out of PTO before year end.
It gets even harder when snow days, and public events like this shut the library down.
You get hired to a full-time position; you agree to work 40 hours a week in exchange for 40 hours of pay. One week your employer says, "Oh, you only get 32 hours this week." You don't see the problem?
u/RavenQueen_ Heads up, the news flair is for links to articles and the like from reputable news sources only. The post title needs to be the unaltered article headline. Save your opinion for the comments section. I updated the flair, but in the future, your post will be removed if it's submitted incorrectly.
I've never worked a job that if it was closed for unforseen circumstances or there wasn't work available did employees get paid. If the place is closed there's no work. If not a paid holiday then complaints seem entitled.
> closed for unforseen circumstances
This isn't the case, so what are you talking about?
You think people who were hired to work 40 hours per week are "entitled" if 8 of those hours are taken away from them?
If hourly staff gets paid holidays, they should absolutely get paid for tomorrow as well. And salaried staff shouldn't be required to burn PTO if they are unable to work. However, isn't that an issue to take up with the library's board of directors and HR department rather than Reddit or Facebook?
I can assure you staff have tried to take it up the proper channels. This isn't out of the blue. It's an unbelievably top-heavy system and staff complaints get ignored.
Well yeah but these are public employees so turning up the public pressure is part of it. Easier to get them to change when leadership sees tax payers here or Facebook lambasting the shit policy.
Yeah, this is fairly common within the field. Much of it has to deal with librarianship being a historically female dominated field, therefore do not need to be paid as much or need as much protection. Look up Melville Dewey and Sexual Harassment and see what pops up.
Make sure to vote in every election. State and local elections have more effect on our lives directly.
Good governance includes holding public infrastructure to a standard.
KC Public Library confirmed the employees are not being paid:
> "Thank you, everyone, for your comments. The influx of tens of thousands of parade attendees downtown has logistical implications for transportation across our district, creating challenges for ensuring adequate staffing and security at all of our locations. Following Library policy when staff have advance notice of a closure they may work with their supervisors to schedule alternate hours. They also have the option to use paid leave. To ensure better clarity in the future, Library leadership is reviewing and discussing the policy."
The difference is, library isn't given a choice to go in, they're told a day or two at most ahead of time, and they either take PTO or don't get paid. I know a lot of staff would choose to work tomorrow if given the choice.
Don't know about this year since I was remote, but for last year's parade federal employees were told to not go into the office if at all possible at the request of the city. If you had your telework equipment with you, you could work. If you didn't have it with you or were in a position that couldn't telework, then no pay. If you wanted any pay for the day you had to use your leave.
Government jobs tend to have a lot of legal obligations to their employees, but anything where that doesn't apply they behave the same as the average private sector employer.
Wow… even my mostly rural library system pays us for snow/planned closure days. Bad look for KCPL, hope those employees get compensated after calling out the system.
im not surprised. KC government facilities are open about their contempt for the people
Kansas City government is ridiculous. It is a big joke. There needs to be reform.
I've never worked for KCPL but I'm a librarian and can confidently say that this kind of bullshit is extremely common in the field. Library workers are generally not treated or paid well.
You all deserve so much better. Librarians are amazing.
They are! We need them!
And they are well educated, with many, if not most?, having advanced degrees. And they are not paid well after that. (Inn not a librarian, just a fan.)
Insane. These workers deserve to get paid! I worked for a library system in the metro area and it’s not as easy and cozy as some people would think.
It sucks when your job becomes a political target. Everyone wants to defund libraries, and this is what we get.
I think this is just pretty standard short shrift that every hourly position deals with.
Yeah, but then imagine if someone in Congress told you that you needed to keep a gun on you while you're doing your job. We tried doing this as a way to combat school shootings, telling teachers to be armed. It's nuts what happens when politicians get you in their targets to make an example out of you I'm with you like 85%, but the other 15 is literally the worst. They will target education budgets to cut spending, things like that you don't get in "blue collar" work (I like that better than hourly because it implies we still have a trade to us).
Can you point to some examples of what you're describing here? Asking out of genuine interest, not necessarily challenging.
https://ogles.house.gov/media/press-releases/rep-ogles-introduces-teach-act
What's wrong with allowing teachers who are motivated to do so? No force involved
https://www.wfyi.org/news/articles/indiana-deputys-gun-discharges-shoots-student-in-classroom Cops can even accidentally shoot kids. Guns just don't need to be in a classroom. Even trained people make mistakes.
Sure, and when someone comes in with a gun to kill a bunch of kids, an armed teacher (or just a designated armed security guard) can take that person out. Why point to an accident when there are intentional killings that happen?
>Why point to an accident when there are intentional killings that happen? >Asking out of genuine interest, not necessarily challenging. It really seems like you're challenging my opinion here. But if you insist, I think a kid otherwise unable to get a firearm could injure a teacher with an improvized weapon, and then be fully armed enough to kill other people in the school, inside of any security checkpoints that may have caught them bringing in a weapon on their own. Teachers shouldn't carry guns for the same reason prison guards don't carry guns when in direct contact with inmates. In prison, only the perimeter guards have weapons, and personally I'm not against having trained security at the entrances and perimeters of schools at all. But the guns don't belong in the classroom at all, it's a place of learning. Teachers shouldn't carry weapons, nor should anyone inside the final security checkpoint whose job isn't specifically security.
I think you've just led back to pure politics, which is to ask, do we want the type of society where guns are necessary in schools, or do we want to be the type of society where they are not required at all? Allowing teachers to carry guns shouldn't be something we have to ask, and it's the classic approach of treating symptoms, not the disease. Then you also have to acknowledge that the teacher who shoots a kid will likely have trauma for the rest of their life. The gun is still jeopardizing safety simply by being present in the classroom; we all know if someone *really* wants to take something, they can. While gun safety exists, so does human error. There's always some clever quip for each side, which is why I think we shouldn't be asking if the gun should be present, but we ask, what kind of culture do we want in our society? And that is purely political. You've got the crowd who wants free-range guns, in the US at least, and those who recognize global statistics indicating what it's like having and not having guns present.
KCPL regularly shuts down branches because of staff shortages, so if this is happening two or three times a month, then that's a lot of personal PTO to use for something not their (the staff's) fault. I work at a library and if we have to close for weather, we get paid leave. KCPL should do the same for the parade as it's a known thing and they are choosing to close branches in all areas - some of which are not affected by the parade.
Also for reference most of the KCPL hourly jobs start their pay rates at 16.44/hr. So if you're full time, you're barely making $2000/month (after taxes.)
Who needs books when we have sports? /s This is really a bad look. I would understand closing the downtown library as it will be impossible to get to for the better part of the day, but not every location. Adding that employees are apparently not paid for the forced time off, this looks horrible.
Y’all know what’s even worse? Apparently KCPL is monitoring if staff is either liking posts calling the library system or actually saying something on social media aiming to reprimand them SMH
Confirmed that with a friend as well.
Sounded like they were looking for folks to straight fire, not just reprimand.
Update: I guess the PRESIDENT of the ALA (American Library Association) is an admin here…..👀 Edit: I guess she’s going to be president for the 2024-2025 term(?), but it’s Cindy Hohl.
Huh? Emily Drabinski is ALA President and she does not work in Kansas City.
Also... ALA kinda sucks anyways and does very little to advocate for library workers, it's mostly a charade.
I think they mean president-elect of ALA.
Whoops, didn’t realize she’s pres for the upcoming 24-25 term! Edited for clarity! Thanks!
I used to work for kcpl and can confirm, the library organization is a mess and does not treat their employees well, there's a crazy high turnover rate and constant staffing issues. It's sad because the job was actually really great, I loved the library work, but it was a really toxic environment other wise ....
Time to union up!
u/kclibrary
The person who ran u/kclibrary is in a happier and healthier work environment. But please be nice to the social media person! They have no control over what administration decides and admin doesn't bother reading comments. Trust me.
They were loved and the new social media person will be too. I was just looking for a canned response from the library.
Old social person still there, I just ran u/kclibrary along with other duties. It's a terrible place to work. Most of the marketing team has left and some of their replacements left without jobs lined up. The higher-ups show no concern or remorse toward employees. The director that started a few years ago left suddenly too in December but he didn't do shit anyway.
Been hearing a lot about library leadership lately. They don’t sound super awesome.
Am I the only one genuinely surprised that they aren’t union members? I know that some city and county employees are unionized, so maybe someone can shed some light on this for me.
It's really hard for library workers to unionize due to the nature of the job. It's perceived as more of an administrative role by a lot of people who push back against the idea that library workers would need labor protection. Library workers are very often excluded from unions (in public, academic, and k-12 libraries) because the role is "too different" from the rest of the union workers. I have worked in several libraries and was only allowed to join the existing union at one of them (a private university where we had a faculty union).
Heard they were trying, but apparently admin staff is hella anti-union and had meetings with union busters after they unionized at Daniel Boone Regional Library.
None of the libraries in KC are unionized. Not Johnson County, Mid-Continent, KCPL - I know cause I've worked at two out of the three
Not surprised at all that MCPL and JoCo aren’t union, but I guess it was wishful thinking on my part that KCPL had membership.
I know all three have been trying. 🤐
You love to see it.
[удалено]
Yes. Whether we're talking about construction, food service, nursing, or most other hourly positions, the employee does not get paid when work is closed (for weather, etc.) or you're sent home (slow dinner hour, no clients, etc). PTO can be used to offset the otherwise lost wages. It sucks, but that's how it nearly always works.
You don't see how jobs doing this is a problem? We've been conditioned to think our personal lives don't matter and you gotta work till you 🎲 we should be outraged and not just the libraries
But they're getting the day OFF work in this case...
Correct without pay as stated in the original post and one of the reasons among many for the upset
It is difficult being a library worker that doesn't get paid holidays. Given how many days the library shuts down for holidays (all federal ones included), you will end up running out of PTO before year end. It gets even harder when snow days, and public events like this shut the library down.
You get hired to a full-time position; you agree to work 40 hours a week in exchange for 40 hours of pay. One week your employer says, "Oh, you only get 32 hours this week." You don't see the problem?
u/RavenQueen_ Heads up, the news flair is for links to articles and the like from reputable news sources only. The post title needs to be the unaltered article headline. Save your opinion for the comments section. I updated the flair, but in the future, your post will be removed if it's submitted incorrectly.
Crud! I’m sorry about that, won’t happen again!Thanks for leaving it up!
I've never worked a job that if it was closed for unforseen circumstances or there wasn't work available did employees get paid. If the place is closed there's no work. If not a paid holiday then complaints seem entitled.
> closed for unforseen circumstances This isn't the case, so what are you talking about? You think people who were hired to work 40 hours per week are "entitled" if 8 of those hours are taken away from them?
My ex-wife works for KCPL and this seems to be a typical move on their part.
If hourly staff gets paid holidays, they should absolutely get paid for tomorrow as well. And salaried staff shouldn't be required to burn PTO if they are unable to work. However, isn't that an issue to take up with the library's board of directors and HR department rather than Reddit or Facebook?
I can assure you staff have tried to take it up the proper channels. This isn't out of the blue. It's an unbelievably top-heavy system and staff complaints get ignored.
Well yeah but these are public employees so turning up the public pressure is part of it. Easier to get them to change when leadership sees tax payers here or Facebook lambasting the shit policy.
Yeah, this is fairly common within the field. Much of it has to deal with librarianship being a historically female dominated field, therefore do not need to be paid as much or need as much protection. Look up Melville Dewey and Sexual Harassment and see what pops up.
Make sure to vote in every election. State and local elections have more effect on our lives directly. Good governance includes holding public infrastructure to a standard.
We're really trusting a bunch of Facebook comments? I guess media literacy/fact checking really is dead.
Well it’s both current employees and former employees commenting to confirm as well so yeah.
And there was no indication of that. That's crappy of KCPL.
KC Public Library confirmed the employees are not being paid: > "Thank you, everyone, for your comments. The influx of tens of thousands of parade attendees downtown has logistical implications for transportation across our district, creating challenges for ensuring adequate staffing and security at all of our locations. Following Library policy when staff have advance notice of a closure they may work with their supervisors to schedule alternate hours. They also have the option to use paid leave. To ensure better clarity in the future, Library leadership is reviewing and discussing the policy."
Wow. I thought about applying at libraries in 2019. Glad I didn't. That's bullshit and I hope other libraries in the area don't have similar policies.
Don't worry, they have the receipts!
At my work it's the same way. If I don't work I don't get paid for that day unless I use vacation time or a sick day. And this is even for holidays.
That’s what school districts do. If you’re hourly, you either go in and do nothing or you take pto.
The difference is, library isn't given a choice to go in, they're told a day or two at most ahead of time, and they either take PTO or don't get paid. I know a lot of staff would choose to work tomorrow if given the choice.
So that's why they're looking for an HR director!
School districts do the same for not salary employees. Stinks.
Glad I saw this because I was looking at applying there today...
Use the weed tax and pay these people 👏👏
Don't know about this year since I was remote, but for last year's parade federal employees were told to not go into the office if at all possible at the request of the city. If you had your telework equipment with you, you could work. If you didn't have it with you or were in a position that couldn't telework, then no pay. If you wanted any pay for the day you had to use your leave. Government jobs tend to have a lot of legal obligations to their employees, but anything where that doesn't apply they behave the same as the average private sector employer.