Russ Buettner, New York Times; In New York City, a Chilly Library Has Its Rewards:
"In the pantheon of New York City jobs, many people face rugged extremes. Ironworkers brave fierce winds high on beams. Subway track workers traverse dank tunnels. Firefighters climb through flames.
But inside some city public libraries, the definition of extreme trends more toward turtleneck than breakneck.
Under a little-known contract provision titled “Extreme Temperature Procedures,” unionized workers at branches of the New York Public Library can accrue compensatory time when the temperature inside dips below 68 degrees for a couple of hours. Similar clauses exist for libraries across the city.
Officials with all three public library systems say they do not track the number of days awarded to chilled employees, but they estimate the clause is invoked only a few times each year because the heating systems at the branches are well maintained.
Indeed, one of the highest-paid outside contractors for the Queens Borough Public Library is R.P. Cooling Corp., of Hicksville, L.I., which maintains the heating and cooling systems in its 62 branches.
While there are no federal regulations governing workplace temperatures, a trade group — the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers — suggests buildings maintain temperatures of 67 to 82 degrees for “comfort purposes.”
In the United Kingdom, regulations require that workplace temperatures be “reasonable,” which the government defines generally as at least 16 degrees Celsius, or a hair below 61 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Even at 16 degrees Celsius, there shouldn’t be safety or health issues, it’s more in terms of comfort and productivity,” said Alan Hedge, a Cornell University professor who researches and advises corporations on work environment issues.
Angela Montefinise, a spokeswoman for the New York Public Library, said the temperature clause had been around for decades. “The goal of this clause, which has been amended over the years, is to ensure safe working conditions for our staff but also to continue to provide an essential service to our public,” she said.
But such a temperature provision does seem rare, if not unique. City firefighters were excused from performing inspections during “inclement weather,” which included when the wind-chill factor dropped to 20 degrees and below. But the city won elimination of that restriction in 1988.
Because of the structure of the city’s library systems and the vagaries of labor negotiations, there are varying definitions of an extreme condition.
The city’s public libraries are run by three nonprofit agencies, funded by the city. Each negotiates working condition contracts with a local chapter of District Council 37, the city’s largest municipal union.
All three contracts require some action when the temperature drops below certain thresholds for two hours. Librarians may be reassigned to a warmer library. In every borough except Brooklyn, library workers can elect to continue working in the extreme conditions in exchange for paid leave, or compensatory time, to be taken later. In Brooklyn, workers are either sent home with pay or reassigned.
But there is no agreement on what constitutes extreme cold. The level is below 63 degrees in Queens, below 65 in Brooklyn, and below 68 for branches in Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx, which are all controlled by the New York Public Library.
In the last round of contract negotiations, the clause for branches controlled by the New York Public Library was modified so that workers could collect comp time and keep working, meaning the branch could stay open. The temperature threshold was also reworded from “below 68” degrees to “67 degrees or below,” which, of course, means basically the same thing.
The union used the changes as a bargaining chip to win promotions in certain job titles. “When we went from 68 to 67, we actually got something for that,” said Carol Thomas, president of the union for library workers in the New York Public Library system.
There has been a tentative agreement in the current round of contract talks to make the clause “less convoluted,” Ms. Thomas said, but it is still intact.
“This was a hot topic in our contract that the library would love to not have in our contract, but we make sure it still stays there,” she said.
During the summer, similar work rules kick in when the temperature rises above a certain level, but that’s a story for another season."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/nyregion/12libraries.html?scp=6&sq=libraries&st=cse
No comments:
Post a Comment