https://wiki.diglib.org/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Labor%2FValuing-Labor%2F2019-09-06Labor/Valuing-Labor/2019-09-06 - Revision history2026-05-26T21:23:39ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.44.0https://wiki.diglib.org/index.php?title=Labor/Valuing-Labor/2019-09-06&diff=14806&oldid=prevAdw: Notes from the Labor WG call 2019-09-062019-10-13T23:31:42Z<p>Notes from the Labor WG call 2019-09-06</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>'''DLF WG on Labor in Digital Libraries, Archives and Museums: Valuing Labor Subgroup'''<br />
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Meeting minutes: September 6, 2019<br />
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'''''Tech Workers Coalition'''''<br />
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Facilitator: Jess Farrell<br />
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Note-taker: Amy Wickner<br />
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[https://wiki.diglib.org/Labor/Valuing-Labor/2019-Calls Complete 2019 schedule]<br />
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== Background ==<br />
[https://techworkerscoalition.org/ Tech Workers Coalition]<br />
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[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iyHXWQyB1PMVXcjY83B0Lg-oBe_OGjlISKpH7NYTLEA/edit?usp=sharing Collective Responsibility white paper (draft)]: quick overview of what it is and what it tells us<br />
* IMLS grant to bring people together to talk about precarity in libraries, archives & museums<br />
* In the white paper: how the forum was brought together, findings, plans to put together guidelines for granting agencies<br />
Context: a lot of library work is on soft money → problems when a lot of your workforce is precarious<br />
* What can granting agencies which are filling in gaps in our labor market do to actively make the situation a little better for ppl in those positions?<br />
* Guidelines for institutions seeking money from those institutions<br />
* What does the report have to say about digital work?<br />
** One example is fetishization / pairing of youth & technology, manifested as considering tech positions to be entry-level, lower compensation but high expectations of technical skill<br />
** See also: complicated digital library work as just one aspect of someone’s job<br />
* Forum structure, what it was like to have funders & managers as part of the conversation?<br />
** Productive uses for conflict e.g. topics that aren’t CoC violation but might make people uncomfortable - how to use those to move the conversation forward?<br />
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== Discussion questions for the guest ==<br />
Who is the TWC? Where are you? How did you form?<br />
* Desire to see the sector we’re in vastly more democratically organized & responsive to workers<br />
* Central challenges: raising consciousness, expanding who is a tech worker (including workers downstream in tech companies), who can we be in solidarity with?<br />
* How the org is run: decentralized, started ~4y ago in Bay Area, larger chapters are on West Coast (?), democratically run, communicate over Slack, anyone can start projects<br />
** Boston: learning clubs around different issues e.g. tech ethics, #metoo + worker power, 996 movement, Google walkouts, digital media organizing; working groups around different topics<br />
* Tech sector notoriously difficult to organize<br />
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What has the TWC won or supported through collective action?<br />
* See ourselves less as direct organizers and more as creating a space for learning & solidarity<br />
* Wayfair walkout<br />
** Boston furniture company with purely online presence<br />
** A few employees uncovered that Wayfair was selling furniture to a contractor for camps on the border<br />
** A few 100 workers walked out, support from the community<br />
** Part of longer-term organizing at the company<br />
** Helpful thing they did: Allied with existing internal affinity groups e.g. LGBTQ & other identity groups already organized within the company<br />
* People organizing committees within their companies e.g. getting conversation started about unionizing<br />
* Seattle chapter: organizer training adapted from IWW, 16-hr → 1-day<br />
* Boston chapter also working on organizer training<br />
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What are your reactions to the Collective Responsibility draft report?<br />
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What similarities and differences do you see between the labor situations that TWC members and DLF Labor members face?<br />
* A lot of us aren’t unionized although AFL-CIO considers librarians one of the highest-unionized groups of professionals 30-something%<br />
* Lots of library workers are tech workers too<br />
* Looking at IT project manager v. library project manager salary: IT person gets paid a lot more<br />
* Experiences working with tech workers who aren’t perceived as such by the rest of the world<br />
** Right now mostly relationship-building<br />
** TVCs = temps, vendors, contractors, often doing same exact work as FT engineers but paid half as much<br />
** See this e.g. at Google: flashy office v. TVCs segregated to another building, company using this to depress labor costs<br />
** Surfacing inequities: we’re doing the same work, pay inequity is bs<br />
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Where might the TWC fit into our goal of building solidarity among digital library workers in order to change our current labor realities?<br />
* Welcome folks from this group at TWC meetings (ty!)<br />
* Do members get access to resources e.g. if they’re thinking about unionizing?<br />
** Check in with your local chapter https://techworkerscoalition.org/#connect<br />
** Always looking to show up for other tech workers<br />
** Any resources on how walkouts, demos, organizing have been done before? Uncovering exactly what an institution was doing and then doing something about it<br />
* In libraries, there are also ties we can uncover e.g. where are university endowments spent?<br />
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== Discussion questions for the DLF Labor group ==<br />
How do you think the TWC might fit into our goal of building solidarity among digital library workers?<br />
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Does your employer view you as a “tech worker”? Do you view yourself as a “tech worker”?<br />
* What kinds of people at your workplace are considered tech workers?<br />
* Academic library: IT folks, work at library but not classified as librarians, possibly not unionized (while librarians are)<br />
* Research database (producing records for secondary academic literature, reads the thing & tells you what the subject headings are): work for technically a nonprofit, library assn within a library assn, funding comes from database product. Technically a librarian but only 3/10 people who do indexing are LIS graduates. Self-understanding of people doing the job that we do is pseudo-academic rather than tech worker or industrial production, even if nature of work feels more like industrial production. Ambiguity of non-scholarly production within nonprofit that gets all of its budget from the product.<br />
* People considered tech workers based on the department they’re in, regardless of the type of work they do.<br />
* People who maintain the infrastructure = tech workers; people who maintain data = not<br />
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What would be some benefits or downfalls of employers perceiving digital library workers as "tech workers"?<br />
* People who are perceived as tech workers seem to be paid more although not sure about benefits - a big problem across LAM<br />
* Would it be good for us? Not good for us?<br />
* Do we want to be expanding the box of “tech worker” to include more people or is that just creating scarcity elsewhere?<br />
* Libraries hiring a programmer is often like “this is a big new thing” - link to institutions fetishizing youth & tech<br />
* Connection to tech downstream workers not being perceived as tech workers, line drawn between who’s considered an engineer even inside of tech companies<br />
* More about a word in a job title rather than the work people are doing<br />
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== Logistics & announcements ==<br />
Next meeting: Friday 10/4, 2pm ET/11am PT: Building a working group initiative around an issue</div>Adw