College and Research Libraries


MICHAEL J. SIMONDS 

Work Attitudes and Union Membership 
Clerical workers of two unionized academic libraries (the University 
of Pennsylvania and Drexel University) were surveyed in an attempt 
to relate specific work and union attitudes. Elements considered in-
cluded sex, age, education, job satisfaction, and union activism. The 
study also compares the previous union attitudes of the workers with 
their attitudes after their union experience. 

BACKGROUND FOR THE STUDY 

THE PROBLEM OF UNIONIZATION IN LI-
BRARIES has been given increasing atten-
tion in library literature in recent years. 
Naturally enough, this attention has 
focused on the librarian caught in the 
dilemma between the ideals of the pro-
fessional organization and the proven 
effectiveness of the labor union. Less at-
tention has been paid to the unioniza-
tion of the nonprofessional staff of the 
library. Yet the continued growth and 
success of clerical and public service 
unions guarantee that an increasing 
number of future librarians will find 
themselves working in union situations 
whether or not they are members them-
selves. 

Few textbooks in library administra-
tion so much as acknowledge the exist-
ence of unions, and there is little in the 
library school curriculum which would 
adequately prepare a librarian to deal 
with them. Yet within a library system 
which has a unionized clerical staff, it 
is at the very lowest levels of adminis-

Michael ]. Simonds is a member of the 
staff of the University of Pennsylvania Li-
braries, Philadelphia. This article is based 
on a paper prepared while the author was 
a student in the Graduate School of Library 
Science, Drexel University. 

136 I 

tration where the inexperienced librari-
an must deal on a day-to-day basis with 
the union, supervising the department 
or section within the context of a for-
mal union contract. Here the librarian 
must quickly become acquainted with 
the contract provisions and language, 
management rights, grievance proce-
dures, and detailed, formalized job de-
scriptions. If it achieved nothing more 
than to familiarize the librarian with 
the ideas and attitudes of the clerical 
worker, research in this area would be 
more than justified. 

But perhaps we can ask for even 
more; in a systematic study of work and 
union attitudes among clerical em-
ployees we might also find some answers 
relevant to the dilemma of the librari-
an. Why do people join unions? Which 
union benefits do people consider most 
important? Which aspects of unioniza-
tion do union members themselves find 
most distasteful? Is a person more like-
ly to support a union if he is dissatisfied 
with his job or his supervisor? Once a 
union has been established and has 
found a working relationship with the 
library does it promote employee loyal-
ty to the library? Or is there something 
inherent in the bargaining process that 
inevitably entails a certain degree of 
employee-administration alienation? It 
is questions such as these that this study 
will attempt to probe. 



THE STUDY 

A questionnaire on work attitudes 
and union membership was given to 
clerical employees of the University of 
Pennsylvania and Drexel University li-
braries. The questionnaires were de-
veloped from a series of interviews con-
ducted at Drexel University in January 
1973. The questionnaires were as close 
to being identical as the individual sit-
uation of each institution would allow. 

Local 590 of the American Federa-
tion of State, County, and Municipal 
Employees ( AFSCME) represents the 
clerical workers at the University of 
Pennsylvania library system. All of the 
clerical employees of Drexel University 
are represented by Local 2481 of 
AFSCME, not just those in the library 
system as is the case with Penn. Situated 
a few blocks apart, the libraries of the 
two schools have worked closely togeth-
er, and plans call for an even greater 
degree of cooperation in the future. A 
capsule history of the two union locals 
is presented, for it is in the contrast be-
tween them that some of the most rele-
vant conclusions may be found. 

The University of Pennsylvania 
and Local590 

Local 590 was formed as a result of 
elections held by the National Labor 
Relations Board in February 1969. In 
that election the union received ap-
proximately two-thirds of the votes cast 
and won the right to represent all non-
professional members of the universi-
ty's library system. The local negotiated 
its first contract in the summer of 1969 
followed by a two-year contract in 1970: 
another one-year pact in 1972, and a 
fourth contract starting on May 1, 1973, 
effective for eighteen months. 

These four successful contracts repre-
sent a rise in the base salary rate of 
over $2,600 a year, along with many oth-
er benefits which are all but unprece-
dented for unions of this type. All of 
this was accomplished at the bargaining 

Union Membership I 137 

table. Local 590 did not strike the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, although it did 
support a four-day strike by the cafe-
teria workers in May 1971. 

During the four and one-half years 
Penn has been organized, both the 
union and the administration have 
learned to adjust to the situation. The 
library administration now regularly 
holds seminars for its department heads 
to explain provisions of the contract 
and other subtleties of the collective 
bargaining process. Similarly, the union 
holds monthly meetings for its shop 
stewards to keep them informed on un-
ion business and to discuss problems 
arising in their respective work units. 

On occasion, such as a meeting deal-
ing with the implementation of a new 
medical plan, the administration called 
together the officers and stewards of the 
union to explain fully some new plan 
or program so that the stewards might 
in turn carry the explanation to their 
respective work units. Thus, in effect, 
the university made use of the union as 
a channel of communication to its own 
employees. There is here then an ex-
ample of a library administration and 
a union that have learned to live to-
gether, if not in harmony, at least man-
aging to avoid most of the destructive 
cross-currents so familiar in labor rela-
tions. 

Drexel University and Local2481 

The nonprofessional union at Drexel 
University is of much more recent ori-
gin than the Penn union, and indeed it 
was largely inspired by the success 
gained by Local 590 at Penn. An NLRB 
election, held in 1972 at Drexel, was 
won by the union with a vote of 134 to 
121, with sixty employees not voting. 

Negotiations for the first contract 
were terminated and reopened a num-
ber of times before a federal mediator 
was called in. When his efforts failed to 
bring about a settlement, the union 
struck the university; the strike lasted 



138 I College & Research Libraries • March 1975 

a little less than two weeks before an 
agreement was reached. The tension 
from the strike had only begun to sub-
side when the university discharged the 
head of the library reference depart-
ment, a long-time professional member 
of the Drexel staff who had refused on 
principle to cross the picket line during 
the strike. This action was upheld de-
spite numerous protests, including a pe-
tition from 587 faculty and students. 

Before this matter was settled, how-
ever, it was overshadowed by a strike of 
Drexel maintenance workers. Although 
they had just been through a strike of 
their own, most of the members of Lo-
cal 2481 supported the strike. At the end 
of the first two months of the strike, 
however, only a handful of clerical 
workers remained out. The university 
terminated the services of all those who 
had not returned to work. Among the 
fifteen people who lost their jobs in this 
way were the president, vice-president, 
secretary, treasurer, and two executive 
board members of the union, as well as 
two union stewards. With these people 
removed from the bargaining unit, the 
local was semileaderless during the crit-
ical period of adjustment under the 
new contract. 

The situation of Local 2481 then at 
the time of this survey was unusual: 
Negotiations for a new contract were 
about to begin although several mem-
bers of the negotiating team were no 
longer officially employed by the univer-
sity. All fifteen t erminated members 
were at various stages of judicial pro-
ceedings against the university to regain 
their positions. (After the survey re-
ported here was completed, Local 2481 
lost a decertification election, June 
1973, and thus no longer represents the 
employees at Drexel.) 

The two unions at Penn and Drexel 
present the contrast between a stable, es-
tablished, functioning union and one 
caught in the trauma of conflict and 
frustration. It is to be hoped that the 

results of this contrast will, in some 
meaningful way, cast light on the prob-
lems under consideration. 

MECHANICS OF THE STUDY 

It was the aim of this study to survey 
by questionnaire all current classified 
nonprofessional employees of both the 
Penn and Drexel libraries. 

At Penn a total of 163 persons were 
members of Local 590 at the time of 
this survey. Every effort was made to 
reach the entire membership. A total of 
99 people responded for a return rate 
of 60.7 percent. At Drexel University 
twenty-three returns from the forty-
eight nonprofessionals gave a return 
rate of 47.9 percent. It must also be 
noted that there is a bias built into the 
Drexel sample in that none of the 15 
people terminated by the university 
could be included in the survey. Tech-
nically they are no longer employees of 
the university, and yet they represent 
the core of union activism at Drexel. 

Because of these factors, a higher lev-
el of confidence can be placed in the 
Penn findings than those of Drexel. For 
this reason, the major part of the sur-
vey will rely on the data from Penn. 
The results from Drexel will be used in 
a later section, mainly for the purposes 
of comparison. While every effort was 
made to achieve the highest standards 
of reliability and validity in the instru-
ment used and in the processing of the 
results obtained, all results must be ad-
vanced tentatively and only within the 
limited framework of the stated goals 
of this paper. 

THE RESULTS: 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

The ninety-nine respondents from 
Penn included sixty-four women and 
thirty-two men, a ratio not uncommon 
in the library world. (Three question-
naires were returned without the sex of 
the respondent being specified.) As for 
age, 33 percent of the respondents were 



Union Members hip I 139 

TABLE 1 
JoB SATISFACTION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Sex 
Job Satisfaction Male Female 

Job Interesting 32.4% 34.9% 
Job Mildly Interesting 38.2 34.9 
Job Just Okay 17.7 23.8 
Job Dull and Repetitive 8.8 3.2 
Job a Real Pain 2.9 3.2 

twenty to twenty-five years old, 32 per-
cent twenty-six to thirty, and the re-
mainder thirty-one years old and older. 
In terms of educational background, 40 
percent had at least two years of college, 
another 24 percent had three to four 
years of college. Twelve percent of the 
respondents had completed some grad-
uate work, and 24 percent had some 
graduate studies in librarianship . . 

Work Attitudes 

Questions were asked Penn employees 
concerning work attitudes-their joh 
satisfaction, job complaints, and opin~ 
ions about their supervisors. Table 1 
gives answers to the basic question of 
job satisfaction. · 

The most obvious fact from Table 1 
is how dramatically job satisfaction in-
creases with age. The young are far less 
likely to be happy with their jobs than 
those over thirty who scored a surprising 
93 percent. 

This same phenomenon can be seen 
in the rating of supervisors (Table 2). 
Again it is the young who rate their su-
pervisors more severely, though the dif-
ference here is somewhat less than in 
Table 1. 

Yet age alone is not the only deter-

Age 
2G-25 26-30 31+ Total 

24.3% 28.1% 51.6% 34.5% 
30.3 31.3 42.0 34.5 
33.3 28.1 3.2 21.6 

9.1 9.4 0.0 6.2 
3.0 3.1 3.2 3.2 

mining factor in job satisfaction. One 
of the other major factors was found 
to be education, as shown in Table 3. 
Here it was found that fully 82 percent 
of the library science students and 89.4 
percent of those with one or two years 
of college felt their jobs were at least 
mildly interesting. This compares with 
only 54 percent of those with three to 
four years of college and 58 percent of 
those in graduate school. 

Perhaps this can be accounted for by 
the higher job e.xpectations of those 
groups with a college degree or more. 
Library science students are exceptlons 
to this · trend, but they are working in 
their chosen career field. 

Another significant factor in job satis-
faction turned out to be the relation-
ship between the employee and the su-
pervisor. When asked if they felt their 
supervisors were sympathetic to . their 
job problems, 90.6 percent of those with 
the highest job satisfaction answered 
affirmatively. Of those who felt their 
jobs were just "mildly interesting," 64.7 
percent felt their supervisors were sym-
pathetic. With the "Just Okay" .group, 
this score fell to 54.4 percent while 
those that chose one of the two negative 
responses had a score of only 44.4 per-

TABLE 2 
SUPERVISOR RATING, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Sex Age 
Supervisor Rating Male Female . 2G-25 26-30 31+ Total 

Excellent 36.4% 31.7% 39.3% 25.0% 35.3% 33.3% 
Good 33.3 38.1 30.3 37.5 41.2 36.4 
Fair 18.2 15.9 15.2 18.75 17.6 17.2 
Poor 12.1 14.3 15.2 18.75 5.9 13.1 



140 I College & Research Libraries • March 1975 

TABLE 3 
EDUCATION AND JoB SATISFACTION, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

AJnountofEducation 
Job Rating High School 1-2 College 3-4 College Grad Library Science 

Job Interesting 40.0% 
Job Mildly Interesting 25.0 
Job Just Okay 20.0 
Job Dull and Repetitive 15.0 
Job a Real Pain 0.0 

cent. The most common complaint giv-
en by the employees was about the na-
ture of the work itself (filing, typing, 
etc. ) , and this irritation was felt most 
frequently by the young. The second 
most common complaint was about the 
quality or type of supervision, and this 
was felt across age and sex lines as was 
a third complaint about the catchall of 
"administrative inflexibility." 

Union Attitudes 

Attitudes and opinions of the Penn 
employees toward their union were also 
explored. The most basic question was 
how many would join the union if it 
were a matter of choice? (Penn has a 
union shop.) More than 80 percent in-
dicated they would join. 

Given this rather impressive majority, 
it is interesting to ask what attitudes the 
Penn employees had about unions be-
fore they came to work at Penn. Table 
4 presents some striking differences, first 
of all between men and women. Seventy 
percent of the men had a positive at-
titude toward unions previous to their 
Penn experience as opposed to only 33.8 
percent of the women. Ten times as 
many women as men had simply never 

52.6% 16.7% 16.7% 43.5% 
36.8 37.5 41.7 39.1 

5.3 33.3 33.3 17.4 
5.3 4.2 8.3 0.0 
0.0 8.3 0.0 0.0 

thought much about unions. Interesting~ 
ly, of the members of the library sci-
ence group, only 15 percent had favor-
able union attitudes as opposed to the 
sample's average of 45.3 percent. 

In the answer to a subsequent ques-
tion on the reason for the previous at-
titude, the most common reason given 
for a very high opinion of unions was 
prior personal experience. The most 
frequent reasons for a low opinion were 
the mass media and the prior experience 
of friends or relatives. The respon-
dents indicated overwhelmingly ( 78.6 
percent) that as a result of their ex-
perience at Penn their attitude toward 
unions had become more favorable. 
Three major factors were mentioned 
for this change in attitude: pay benefits, 
job security, and medical benefits. 

Major irritants about the union were 
the lack of individual merit in consid-
eration for job advancement under 
union rules, the problems involved in 
supporting other people's strikes, and 
the possibility of a strike threat every 
year. 

THE REsULTS: DREXEL 

The total number of respondents for 

TABLE 4 
PREVIOUS UNION ATTITUDE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Sex Amount of Education 
High 1-2 3-4 Library 

Male Female School College College Grad Science Total 

Favorable 40 .~ 17.7% 31.5% 17.6% 34.8% 30.7% 15.0% 23.7% 
Mildly Favorable 30.0 16.1 15.7 47.2 17.4 30.7 0.0 21.6 
Never Cared 3.3 33.9 31.5 5.8 17.4 7.7 40.0 22.7 
Unfavorable 20.0 27.4 21.3 23.6 26.0 7.7 35.0 25.8 
Highly Unfavorable 6.7 4.9 0.0 5.8 4.4 23.2 10.0 6.2 



the Drexel library is much smaller than 
that of Penn, twenty-three as compared 
to ninety-nine. Thus it is more difficult 
to make generalizations about any sub-
groups in the sample. It must be remem-
bered that the Drexel sample excludes 
the most active union members as these 
individuals had been discharged prior 
to the survey. 

As at Penn, females outnumber males 
(thirteen to nine with one respondent 
not indicating sex); but the Drexel sam-
ple is much younger with 60.8 percent 
of the group in the twenty to twenty-
five age group as opposed to the 33.3 
percent for Penn. 

Local 590 has claimed to have cut the 
turnover rate at Penn from over 60 per-
cent to about 7 percent annually. Cer-
tainly, there is a marked difference be-
tween the two samples. At Penn 50.5 
percent were employed there more than 
four years; at Drexel only 17.4 percent. 

There were differences, also, in ex-
pressions on job satisfaction at the two 
libraries, and Table 5 presents a sum-
mary of the responses. 

TABLE 5 
}OB SATISFACTION, 

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
AND DREXEL UNIVERSITY 

Penn 
Job Satisfaction (N = 99) 

Very Interesting 34.5% 
Mildly Interesting 34.5 
Just Okay 21.6 
Dull and Repetitive 6.2 
A Real Pain 3.2 

Drexel 
(N = 23) 

17.4% 
47.9 
13.0 
13.0 

8.7 

At Drexel 65.2 percent of the re-
spondents had joined the union of their 
own choice, 17.4 percent had begun 
work after the effective date of the new 
contract and thus were required to join 
the union. The remaining 17.4 percent 
had refused to join the union. 

Given the difficult series of events at 
Drexel, one might question the attitude 
of the employees toward the university. 
Asked if the university would be fair 

Union Membership I 141 

to its employees if there were no union, 
the respondents were closely divided-
43.4 percent declaring the school fair, 
56.6 percent answering not fair. At 
Penn, however, in answering the same 
question, 20.8 percent stated the school 
as fair and 74.2 percent as not fair. 
(With a union present, however, 57.6 
percent of the Penn respondents stated 
the university is now fair. The change 
was not so dramatic at Drexel where 
54.5 percent of the sample recorded the 
school as fair given the presence of the 
union.) 

The main job complaint at Drexel, 
overwhelmingly, was inadequate pay. 
All respondents felt they were under-
paid. At Penn, by contrast, 22.3 percent 
considered they were underpaid. 

Drexel respondents' previous attitudes 
toward unions were similar to those at 
Penn, and 43.4 percent recorded favor-
able or mildly favorable attitudes. At 
Penn, however, favorable union atti-
tudes were strengthened as reported 
above; but of the Drexel respondents, 
only 30.4 percent reported a more fa-
vorable attitude following the union ex-
perience. Drexel employees' complaints 
against the union were spread across the 
board. Naturally enough, c'problems in-
volved in supporting other people's 
strikes" was the most frequently cited 
complaint, mentioned by fully 74 per-
cent of those responding. But also fre-
quently mentioned were such factors as 
"lack of communication between lead-
ership and union" ( 43.5 percent) and 
"lack of effective leadership" ( 39.1 per-
cent). 

As at Penn, pay benefits were the most 
often mentioned advantage of union 
membership. Medical and education ben-
efits were also cited, although the lat-
ter was mentioned more frequently by 
nonunion than union members. 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 

The most definite finding from this 
survey was the central role of wage and 



142 I College & Research Libraries • March 1975 

salary benefits in any consideration of 
union attitudes at either school. The 
employees at Penn r ecognized their wage 
benefits as the most central and impor-
tant success of their union. Although 
77.8 percent of the Penn employees in-
dicated at the time of the survey that 
they were at least adequately paid, the 
fact that they were aware that this con-
dition w as the result of the success of 
their own local was seen in the over-
whelmin g response to the answer on 
union b enefits which m entioned wages 
and salaries almost t wice as often as all 
other benefits combined. 

Both education and age were factors 
related to job satisfaction. The presence 
of a sympathetic supervisor was also 
stron gly related with job satisfaction. 
The least satisfied employees were the 
young, and their most frequent com-
plaint was the nature of the work itself. 

Union m embers do seem to be less 
satisfied with their jobs than nonunion 
members or those who would not be un-
ion memb ers if they had a choice. How-
ever, it must not be overlooked that 
while their job satisfaction was lower 
than the antiunion group, a majority 
( 65 p er cent) of union members did 
have a positive r esponse toward their 
jobs. 

The questions . on previous union atti-
tud es could not have been encouraging 
to the union organizer. The dramatical-
ly mote negative attitude of women 
than men on this question seemed es-
p ecially r elevant given the usually high 
ratio of w omen to men in most librar-
ies . The only encouraging factor here 
is that most women may simply not have 
thought much about unions, and their 
opinions may be based on images from 
the mass media. Such · opinions are sub-
ject to change given a degree of prac-
tical success by the union as was shown 
in the Penn sample where 81 percent of 
the women were now more favorable 
towards unions as a result of their ex-
p erience. 

Such may not be the case with profes-
sional librarians. In our sample library 
science students had the most negative 
previous union attitudes of any educa-
tional group. Just as importantly these 
negative attitudes may more likely be 
based on philosophical considerations 
than other groups and, therefore, less 
subject to change as the result of prac-
tical success on the part of the union. 
Although a solid majority of this group 
( 63.6 percent) now support the union, 
this still compares unfavorably with the 
83 percent support from the employees 
at Penn as a whole. In short; it is not im-
possible to win over even the profes-
sionally oriented employee; but they 
may be the toughest group the union 
has to deal with. 

It also appeared as if it is the union 
which receives either the credit or the 
blame for the employee's welfare . 
Where successful, the union receives 
full credit; and the administration is 
still perceived with mistrust. Where suc-
cess is limited, it is the union leadership 
which takes the blame, apparently re-
gardless of the policies pursued b y the 
administration. Giv~n the fact that only 
two unions in very different situations 
were studied, this conclusion must be 
very tentatively advanced. It would be 
interesting to see if this finding ·holds 
up with other unions in the same field , 
or whether certain styles of leadership 
are able to overcome a lack of immedi-
ate practical success while building an 
effective organization. 

Lastly, it does not appear that any 
large degree of union-management con-
flict can take place without that conflict 
being reflected to some degree by bitter 
divisions among the employees and thus 
the union membership · itself. Most 
labor wars are in' part civil wars, and the 
problem which confronts the union 
leadership is how to .deal with an admin-
istration in an adversary relationship 
without alienating a large part of its 
own less than enthusiastic members.