Public libraries in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, shut down for three hours September 25 as about 150 members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees demonstrated at city hall to demand pay equity and the elimination of gender-based wage discrimination.
“We’re hoping to make a statement here that libraries work because of us,” union local President Gwen Thomson said in the September 26 Saskatoon Star Phoenix. “There won’t be library service unless the employer does deal with the library staff.”
Union members voted September 22 to strike after rejecting the library board’s offer of a 4% increase for each year of a two-year contract ending March 31, 2003. Workers said the across-the-board increase—which exceeds the 2%-per-year raises offered by other public-sector employers—doesn’t adequately address gender-based wage discrimination.
The lowest-paid library workers must lift heavy books all day, making their work comparable to higher-paid city groundskeepers, Thomson said. The union requested a study of the skills, educational requirements, working conditions, and pay of library jobs to those of predominantly male occupations with similar requirements.
Posted September 30, 2002.