Daniel Boone Library employee union continues contract negotiations

Sticking points on wages, health care coverage and a subcontractor clause remain as Daniel Boone Regional Library administration and the employee union entered another round of contract negotiations Tuesday morning.

Much of the morning session administration and union negotiators met separately, coming together for a brief 15 minutes and an at times heated back-and-forth between Margaret Conroy, library executive director, and Jane Billinger, union chief negotiator with American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The union had presented four tentative agreements as a financial and benefits package, which library administration preferred to argue as separate items.

Separating them means the union will have to reevaluate its position on health care, Billinger said, turning attention to health care coverage for transgender employees, seeking a response from Conroy.

“We cannot give preference to one health condition over another should we find a policy that has a different approach to transgender care than normal market policies do,” Conroy said. “… We don’t want to limit ourselves to any type of health care condition in our health insurance proposal.”

The union is seeking nondiscrimination through a transgender health care policy preference, Billinger said.

“Stating you don’t want to prefer one health condition over the other is stating you prefer one type of identity over another,” she said.

Conroy balked at this assertion.

“That is blatant nonsense and I am not going to address that comment any further,” she said.

When reviewing salary charts, years of service regardless of employment classification and applying the health care ask to those charts, around 30 employees would see a more than 25% raise with some upward of a 60% raise, Conroy said. So, administration is seeking to cap raises at 25% to be more financially responsible, she said.

“The board was not supportive of making the big leap that it would take to get everybody there (if there was no cap) and also were not 100% supportive of placing people on the scale simply for years of service,” she said.

Billinger sought clarification on where administration got its numbers to make this income claim. Administration had used a comparable market analysis by St. Charles, which the union also reviewed, but concrete numbers were not available to the union.

“St. Charles’ data is not our work product to share. You gave us market comps for Kansas City and St. Louis, but those are not our market. They have a higher cost of living compared to Columbia,” Conroy said replying, and noting that current union proposal has significant financial impacts.

The union seeks years of experience to be acknowledged in wage increases because even shelvers are conducting customer service duties that sometimes may fall to a librarian, Billinger said.

More:Library union, administration discuss wages, health costs as they work toward a contract

“When a patron comes to the library, they can’t tell who is a librarian or not simply by looking at them. Everybody is fielding questions, fielding librarian work and that is valuable experience that management’s proposal isn’t fully acknowledging,” she said.

The counter offer from the administration again showed a preference for privatization and contracting out employment, Billinger said. This continues to be a top issue.

“Members won’t ratify this. There’s an easy path and a hard path and we’re willing to go pretty far to protect our staff jobs,” she said.

More:Use of subcontractors at Daniel Boone Regional Library is a sticking point. Here’s why

Charles Dunlap covers local government, community stories and other general subjects for the Tribune. You can reach him at cdunlap@columbiatribune.com or @CD_CDT on Twitter. Subscribe to support vital local journalism.

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