11th National Library Technicians Conference

Feel the fear and do it anyway!

Sue Strugnell

It is particularly satisfying for me to stand here and see this large room filled with library technicians.

It is satisfying because when I took up my first job in a library there was no such person as a library technician in this State. Indeed ... there were some forces which might have preferred matters stayed that way.

The fact that you are here as Library Technicians in such numbers today ... and the fact that I am here as the first woman to lead Tasmania's main public sector union in its 100-year history ... are the happy endings of two related stories about how those forces were overcome.

One is your story. The story of your profession in this State and how it grew from miscellaneous beginnings into a profession in its own right.

And one is my story. The story of how my present role leading Tasmania's public sector workers grew from my work in libraries as our profession struggled for recognition.

These stories are entwined so I will tell both stories together...

Feel the fear and do it anyway
My first library was attached to a pub! in Strathgordon, a hyrdo-electric construction village on the edge of Tasmania's south west wilderness. There was a small community complex attached to the pub and one room of the complex was dedicated to a library which served both the school and the local community.

Please don't think that a pub and a library are a strange pairing. Strathgordon is remote ... summer comes slowly up that way. The library and the pub were both important institutions: 'the book' and 'the bottle' being favourite occupations during long and cold winters.

Back in 1974 when I started working there, the village had a population of 1500. Its little library opened 12-hours a week and boasted a turnover which would have made a library in a town ten-times its size proud.

The library was a one person operation and I was it. I took my youngest child who was then 6-months old with me to work in a pram. I don't think women were supposed to take their children to work. But I did not have a manager within 100 kilometres to tell me I was breaking a rule and the village itself thought such a practice quite appropriate and normal.

My pay slip said I was a library assistant so I suppose that's what I must have been. But as far the village were concerned, I was 'the librarian'.

People taking books out on the Monday would return them on the Wednesday when they would take out more books straightaway ... and so it went on. It was here at Strathgordon that I had impressed in me the value, the companionship, the world of possibility which libraries could hold for their communities.

How different this all seems now. I was untrained in library arts or sciences. I was untroubled by how the State bureaucracy classified me. I was unencumbered by a local management.

I simply ran the library. If the village held me to be the librarian then the librarian I was.

Three years later it all changed when the family and I moved to Hobart and I worked part-time at the Moonah Branch Library.

Most certainly I did not run the library any more. Most certainly I was not a librarian. I was, most definitely, a library assistant.

My place was to do such tasks as the librarian directed me to do ... and sadly, I no longer took a child to work.

The work of library assistants was of course valued by the department and by the librarians who directed what we did. Well, it was valued in the sense that they wanted the work done!

Educators already had seen the opportunity to fill a need and a library technicians course was offered at this time through Technical and Further Education.

In 1980 I made three good decisions. I started working full-time. I joined the union, because that was what one did. And I enrolled in the library technicians course at the Hobart TAFE College.

Feel the fear and do it anyway!
When I started the course I was pleased to note that the library service supported employees doing the library technicians course. The course content covered a wide range from cataloguing to display work, from computer skills to photography, from specialist courses in children's literature to media scripting.

When I finished the course two-and-a-half-years later I was pleased to see that the library service was happy to have skilled employees working for them but still the situation was puzzling. The library service would not recognise the qualification in a formal sense, it would not pay anything more for the skills, it would not recognise library technician as a classification and it was having some angst even using the words 'library technician' to describe a position.

How odd this was. How could our work be valued and at the same time be invisible? Despite the qualification, I was to remain a library assistant and was to be paid according to the quaintly-named Keyboard Employees Award.

Over the coming years people who graduated from the library technicians course started emerging in work at the university, in various State Government departments, in public and private schools and in the private sector.

The phrase 'library technician' came to be used when such positions were advertised, but not by the State Government.

In the early to mid-1980s I became involved with a group of qualified technicians, many of whom are attending this conference who were as frustrated with the injustices surrounding our position as I was.

Someone had to speak out about library technicians and the contribution we made to libraries. The group started organising conferences and seminars to let the public know of our role.

But where was the reluctance actually coming from? That reluctance to recognise and value the skills of this new emerging group of employees. Was it organised resistance? Was it institutional bias? Was it simply neglect by management? Were library technicians in fact attempting to over-state their role?

If an individual is experiencing a problem, it often helps to make links between that person's difficulty and broader public policy issues. And the difficulties of a library technician in the state sector at that time were in fact similar to those which had earlier dogged nurses, or which currently influence civilians working for the police department or teacher aides working in schools.

Who was running the professional work going on in hospitals? It was the doctors ... it was not the nurses.
Who runs the professional work going on in schools? Teachers ... not the Teacher Aides.
Who runs the professional work going on in police stations? Police officers ... not civilian workers.

And who was running the professional work going on libraries. Librarians of course ... not their 'assistants'.

The penny dropped.

I learned that there is a sort of politics - with a small 'p' - involved with professions. In some institutions there was and is a dominant profession. The senior administrators in overall charge of the institution consult with the dominant profession over changes. The dominant profession itself has had to struggle to have its professional and workplace concerns addressed.

Quite naturally the institution tends to evolve over time in a way which more or less addresses the aspirations of the dominant profession. And when a new group comes along, then some times new ways of doing things meet resistance.

Consider the long struggle of nurses for recognition of their role despite the absolute authority which doctors once wielded on the ward. Nursing was a womanly role. The system emphasised 'womanly virtues' of caring, compassion and changing bed pans. Nurse training was an internship on the job. Dedication and low pay were the order of the day. And near-unquestioning obedience to the dictum 'Doctor knows best'.

Nursing now is a degree course in its own right. Nurses are professionally responsible, better paid and their role in the health system is acknowledged and rewarded.

All comparisons fall down if you scrutinise them closely enough. And it would be incorrect to seek to make a full comparison between nurses in the hospital system on one hand and library technicians in the library and education systems on the other hand. Nevertheless it is a valid comparison to a point.

The penny had dropped with me and I was not about to let the penny get jammed in the administrative machine! So in 1989 I became a workplace representative for the Tasmanian Public Service Association.

The fact that I had become vocal on the issue led to an invitation for me to represent library staff as the union representative on a significant review being forced by the government of the day on cost-cutting measures with the State Library and Department of Education. There would be many of you who remember the days before CRESAP, and there are in fact there still in vogue sayings which sometimes are heard such 'I'm about to be Cresapped' or, 'My area is about to be Cresapped' meaning quite literally 'Done like a dinner' in the name of cost-efficiency.

This role exposed me to libraries beyond my own workplace and beyond where library technicians were employed. It led me to stand for election to the TPSA Council in 1990 which in turn led to an opportunity for a three-month secondment to the association in 1991. A move from which I have never returned.

In 1992 I became the TPSA's vice-president and became exposed to a whole new set of people who ultimately would be involved with the proper recognition of the qualification of library technician and the proper role of the classification within the system.

But even at the start of the 1990s some years of tough struggle lay ahead. But now I was the TPSA vice-president and at my request I had particular industrial responsibilities for education and libraries.

The lobbying and the discussion continued. There were workplace committees, departmental meetings, letter writing and campaigning.

In 1994 I became assistant secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (as the TPSA has become).

Feel the fear and do it anyway!
The union had for some time been developing a plan to modernise and update all Award positions in the Tasmanian State Sector. Could the resolution of the long-running neglect of library technicians be achieved through this process.

1996 was a beaut year! We finally broke through on the library technician agenda.

Dozens of old awards were swept away, including the Keyboard Employees Award. All these Awards were replaced by four streams with new pay scales and proper classification standards - the Professional stream, the Technical stream, the Operational stream and the Administrative and Clerical stream.

This did not happen by itself. The CPSU and its predecessor had developed these streams and lobbied so hard that the Government agreed to them.

Library technician became a position in its own right. The qualification was recognised and with that came the translation of qualified library technicians to the new Technical Stream.

At last we had a name. We had acknowledgement of our qualification. We had a career path emerging from the administrative fog. Library technician was now a recognised position classified on a main Public Sector Award.

Almost overnight, library technicians gained recognition for the skilled people you were and are. And here we find the nub of the problem against which library technicians had shadow-boxed for years.

If we were skilled people then we could undertake a range of activities which might be perceived as a threat to the dominant profession.

The very idea of formally recognising a qualification was an intrusion into the professional world of the librarian.

Library technicians were skilled enough to undertake work processes previously seen as entry points for librarians - cataloguing, reader advisory services; reference and serial roles. All of which had always been done by the professional in the library system.

For a new profession to emerge and take on these roles is a challenge to the existing way of doing things. It is a challenging development for the dominant profession.

Seen in this context, the resistance to recognition of library technicians is almost natural. We as library technicians ought not interpret the problems we faced in gaining recognition as being based in ill-will or otherwise wrongly motivated.

It was simply a case that in order to advance the agenda of library technicians it was necessary to disturb the status quo. And isn't that the story of all new ideas?

Opposition came too from bureaucrats who had a say in what was a career and what was not. I detected a certain lack of understanding from the bureaucracy of the high level work library technicians were undertaking during my many meetings with them on the matter.

I think there might have been an old mind-set that 'technicians' were males who dealt with obscure technical things. The word 'technician' could not possibly relate to the person - usually, but not always, a woman - behind a desk issuing a book. There was little understanding as to what actually happened which enabled a book to be finally issued, and a deal of reluctance to finally acknowledge the highly skilled processes involved.

I certainly detected a mind-set that if we first recognise the qualification, then soon will follow a demand that the recognition be reflected in pay scales.

After the 1996 breakthrough, library technicians were at last off to the right start in terms of classification and career. And personally, so was I. After a period as assistant secretary I became general secretary in 1999 to fill a vacancy - becoming the first woman to lead Tasmania's public sector employees in their union's 100 year history. And in 2000 I was elected to the position for a four-year term.

Feel the fear and do it anyway!
In the years since recognition in 1996, a range of issues has been worked through or is still being worked through. Despite the moves forward there are still obstacles to be overcome. Recognition within an Award system is good but, unfortunately there are still those who use that same system to thwart an easy road forward.

What of the library technicians who did not undertake the formal course yet have skills and knowledge gained from experience? These people can not be translated to the Technical Award because they do not have a formal technical qualification.

This issue has been managed through by having so-called non-qualified library technicians placed on the Administrative and Clerical Award at salary points which closely relate to the salaries listed on the technical award.

What about formal recognition of prior learning for those library technicians without formal qualifications but with years of experience and good performance in their positions?

Not sure I like that idea says the bureaurocrat! Goes against the Award, and if you argue it doesn't then I'll make sure it's contrary to the State Act.

The age old arguments continue!

Library technicians in schools have their own set of difficulties. They are ostensibly classified as teacher aides and suddenly had rights to be seen differently by school management. Suddenly their budget base was different and schools were required to find the money to pay higher salaries.

These and other matters make up our agenda for the future.

The library system seems to be constantly under some review of other. The words change but the motive appears to be the same. At first the word was down-sizing. Then it became right-sizing. As I mentioned before some call it 'Cresapping' I call it 'cap-sizing'. [hall erupts into raucous laughter] In all these cases the motive appears to be budget restraint.

But it is true that we have all come a long way since the mid-1970s. It has been quite a journey which brings us together to this conference today ... you and I.

I am immensely proud of my association with the profession of library technician. I congratulate all those who have been involved in organising this international conference.

I wish you all well in your conference discussions and if matters arise from it which you would like to see given expression in your workplace, remember to organise with your union to achieve it.

And who knows ... perhaps the future will lead us back to the past. In some ways I hope it does. Advances in employee rights and anti-discrimination legislation are such that I would not be surprised if in a few years mothers can bring children to work with them to their city offices.

If so, that will be a case of remote Strathgordon reaching out to civilise a world which was supposed to have been more advanced than it was. But as for Strathgordon's association of the library with the pub, that is likely to remain forever as local folklore.

Again congratulations - and remember, whatever the challenges,
Feel the fear and do it anyway

Thank you

Author Sue Strugnell is the general secretary of Tasmania's public sector uninion - the first woman to hold this position in the union's 100 year history. She is also a qualified library technician.