To: Carol Mandel, Dean, Bobst Library

NYU - Bargain with your Employees, Restore Library Staffing Levels

We stand in solidarity with Bobst Library workers and call upon New York University to enter into good faith bargaining with their union over the effects of the changes that it imposed on the Library ADRSS staff, as they have been directed to do so by the NLRB.

Why is this important?

New York University’s Bobst Library’s Access, Delivery & Resource Sharing Services Department (ADRSS) comprises six separate units and provides a wide variety of services to library patrons, which requires an equal diversity of skills from library staff.

In November 2013, NYU unilaterally changed the titles and job descriptions of the ADRSS staff members, effectively merging the six units into one, and thereby changed the terms and conditions of their employment, without regard to the work they were originally hired to perform or their ability to perform the additional duties. The Union of Clerical, Administrative & Technical Staff at NYU (UCATS), which represents these workers, as well as 1400 workers across NYU, immediately demanded bargaining over the effects of these changes. The staff members themselves have twice petitioned library management directly to bargain with UCATS.

NYU has consistently and repeatedly refused to enter into good faith bargaining, even after it was ordered to do so by an administrative judge, following a trial before the National Labor Relations Board, which was adjudicated in April 2015.

This case is vitally important not just to the thirty members of the Bobst ADRSS Department but to workers throughout the University who could see their jobs unilaterally transformed without an opportunity to bargain the effects of changes to their conditions of employment.