Librarians and library workers welcome readers attending Vancouver International Writers Festival “Incite” event featuring Linden MacIntyre and Vincent Lam!
Welcome to Vancouver Public Library from your librarians, library technicians and information assistants!
Unfortunately, we are outside this event tonight with bad news – Vancouver Public Library management has cut $500,000 from the operating budget.
This means the loss of frontline library services for readers.
And it means librarians, library technicians and information assistants have had their work reduced to less than 20 hours per week, meaning they no longer qualify for sick pay.
Some of those librarians and library workers have dedicated their entire careers to working for the Vancouver Public Library – over 35 years in some cases.
It’s a disrespectful way to treat librarians and VPL readers who depend on their services to use the library.
But while VPL management are cutting frontline staff hours they have also hired a very expensive veteran lawyer costing hundreds of dollars an hour to negotiate with library staff instead of having management and city officials doing the job which is how the City of Vancouver is bargaining with the inside and outside workers, face-to-face, – at no additional cost to taxpayers.
And ironically, lawyer Kim Thorne is Vice-Chair of the Vancouver International Writers Festival. But we have no issue with Mr. Thorne or the Festival – our concern is with Vancouver Public Library management.
So that’s why we are here tonight – to ask for your support to reverse these frontline service cuts and put librarians and library workers back on the job to provide the knowledge and expertise Vancouver readers deserve.
Please let Vancouver City Council and the Vancouver Public Library Board of Directors know you don’t agree with cutting librarian services at our libraries.
Together we can put librarians back to work at the Vancouver Public Library!
To write to the Vancouver Public Library Board the e-mail address is board@vpl.ca
or
The Vancouver Public Library Board
350 West Georgia, Level 7
Vancouver, BC
V6B 6B1
City Council’s (supplies 96% of the Vancouver Public Library budget) webpage is
http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/mayorcouncil/index.htm. Also seehttp://vancouver.ca/contact.htm
Also you can write mayor and councillors individually, e.g.:
gregor.robertson@vancouver.ca
heather.deal@vancouver.ca
raymond.louie@vancouver.ca
Or write Mayor and Council at:
Mayor and Council
City of Vancouver
453 West 12th Avenue
Vancouver, BC V5Y 1V4
Thank you for caring about your library. Thank you for remembering who owns this public facility.
Download this entry as a leaflet
– Javier Vazquez photo