After surviving heroic attempts to silence me (and, even more serious, to have me fired) by Librarians Guild union bosses (who were also workplace supervisors) I was finally transferred from Inner City Bookmobile to Exposition Park Regional Branch in early 1991. Now, in a “safe” location, I decided to run for President of the Librarians Guild in order to promote rank and file members’ interests (after all, it’s supposed to be a rank and file union, isn’t it?).
Below is a link to my campaign statement (redacted to omit personal names) 1991_Guild_Election_Campaign_State_Redacted.
LAPL librarian supervisors were not happy with my campaign. There were not enough supervisors to form two unions – one for each bargaining unit. They felt threatened although it was never my intention to remove supervisors from the union – simply to remove them from the grievance process in regard to rank and file grievances. It is clearly a conflict of interest for supervisors to decide whether or not a rank and file grievance against a supervisor can go to arbitration.
After a nasty campaign statement was sent out by two union bosses on behalf of my opponent (I don’t have a copy of this handy) I sent out to the membership a response (redacted here) – a link to which appears below
The election generated a lot of interest and I received quite a few postcards from Guild members expressing their opinions. Below is a sampling of them (excluding ones that are vulgar, non-informative or slanderous) redacted to omit personal names:
Guild_1991_Run_For_president_2_Redacted