Update 12/26/23: This article has been updated to include the full name and title of Chinyere Keita.
Part-time workers in the Berkeley Public Library, or BPL, system are organizing due to a 29-hour cap on their schedules instituted in late July.
Union representatives learned that part-time library workers had been consistently working more than 30 hours a week, making them eligible for complete coverage of a medical plan according to the city of Berkeley’s contract with SEIU Local 1021 from earlier this year. When the union made Berkeley officials aware of this, the city responded with a 29-hour cap on part-time library employees without back pay for previously worked hours.
“It was explained verbally to workers that the purpose for this 29 hour cap was so that the library would not be required to pay them full benefits,” said Andrea Mullarkey, an SEIU 1021 member leader and teen librarian at Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch, in an email.
Mullarkey said they received written confirmation of the cap in an email from the library director on Aug. 25.
The 29-hour cap on part-time workers contradicts Berkeley’s Fair Workweek Employment Standards, which state an employer “may not distribute hours in a manner intended to avoid an increase in the number of employees working 30 or more hours per week.”
“Since I’ve been with BPL, I was never told that I could not work over 29 hours,” said Brianna Bradford, a part-time library assistant at Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch. “I’ve been with BPL for 10 or 11 years, part time. I was working 40 hours a week, every single week, every single month for a very long time.”
After having to leave mid-shift because she had reached the 29-hour maximum one week, Bradford and co-worker Chinyere Keita formed No Cap. Keita is also a part-time library specialist at Tarea Hall Pittman South Branch and is a member of BPL’s Racial Justice Advocacy Group.
No Cap is composed of part-time workers impacted by the cap and full-time colleagues who support them. In a statement, No Cap recognized that many part-time workers in the BPL system belong to marginalized communities who are disproportionately impacted by an hours cap and a denial of back pay.
“We’ve worked here for so long, have been patrons and taxpayers,” Keita said. “I’ve said repeatedly to the Board of Library Trustees and city council members that it just feels like a betrayal.”
Emiliano Ruiz, a part-time library technical assistant, had worked at BPL since high school. He recently transferred to the San Francisco Public Library system for better wages and more hours.
Ruiz noted that library workers continued to serve the public during the COVID-19 pandemic and said he now feels as though the city is “cutting (them) out.”
“People rely on these hours to survive in the Bay Area,” Ruiz said. “We’re making around $30,000 a year with almost 40 hours a week and we made it work. Cutting that to 29 hours a week is horrible.”
Councilmember Sophie Hahn met with library workers recently and voiced her support for eliminating the cap.
She also advocated for increased availability of full-time positions to provide workers with benefits and financial stability.
“This has been a hardship for the library workers who’ve been impacted by this,” Hahn said. “It’s something that I very much hope can be resolved as soon as possible and and should have been resolved sooner.”
Other city staff from the Office of the City Manager did not respond to requests for comment.
According to Mullarkey, library workers are slated to meet with library administration this week.
“We want the cap to go away,” Mullarkey said. “And we want more pathways to jobs that are going to have life and family-sustaining compensation.”
