There's concern about low pay and status amongst librarians - in all
sectors

The first thing to make clear is that we do take the issue seriously - and
work on it vigorously. As the professional body we are committed to high
standards of service - and that requires staff of good calibre who are
properly rewarded for their skills and value.

Our Corporate Plan (sent to every member) states that it is the
Association's intention to:

"...extend its influence with employers in order to encourage them to attach
a proper value to library and information work, and while recognising that
the Association is not a trade union, to advocate improved pay and status
for library and information workers as part of our remit to improve
standards of practice in the public interest."

In pursuit of this policy the LA produces a range of salary guides for use
by members and employers - and the LA's Professional Advisers are frequently
in contact with members and employers on salary and related issues. Much of
this is confidential casework but approximately 500 pay related enquiries
are received in a year. These range from general enquiries to helping
members prepare complex evidence for regrading and redundancy claims. We
are not always successful - but there have been many instances where good
advice given to members or strong representations made to employers have led
to improvements in pay and status.

We also look for "pressure points" where representations at national level
can help to make the case for the value of the skills and qualifications of
librarians. Without pressure from the LA there would have been no reference
to "qualified staff" in the recently announced public library standards.

So we are taking the pay and status issue seriously and attempting to
address it with effective action. We intend, in the next few months, to do
three further things which will, we believe, help with this issue. One is
to carry out a survey of the employment marketplace to get a more
comprehensive and objective position of what is going on - probably as a
precursor to a regular "salary survey" along the lines of that undertaken by
the IIS. The second is to commission research into the skills and
competencies required in the current job market in order to ensure that our
courses and qualifications are meeting the needs of members and employers.
And the third is to develop a new framework of qualifications which will
improve the pathways by which members can become Chartered; and which will
include a scheme to enable members to have their continuing professional
development recognised and registered. All of this will, we believe, give
librarianship qualifications more relevance, more currency, and more
credibility with employers.

First, thank you for moving the debate forward in this constructive way.
Second, I cannot find the text of the Salary Guides on the LA web site. Are they there? If not, I think they should be.

With reference to the action point "to develop a new framework of qualifications which will improve the pathways by which members can become Chartered", I do hope the LA will examine very carefully the relevance of Chartership in today's market place. In the LIS world I have operated in, there is little evidence of its relevance. I feel that the Chartership programme and certain other HQ activities are a hugh overhead, reflected in the extortionate membership fees charges to lowly paid members, many of whom have to cough up out of their own pockets.

Having been involved in the Executive Committee of the PESGB, a professional body in the UK energy industry, where some 20 years ago a debate raged on whether the US practice of certification for geoscience practitioners should be extended to the UK, the vast majority of members voted against. It was felt that the industry had enough checks and balances without such measures. As I have mentioned in LA and IIS circles on more than one occasion, the membership benefits for an annual sub of £25 for individuals is considerable in the PESGB. See www.pesgb.org.uk for details.

I got chartered in 1978 by simply getting someone to sign a piece of paper, and I once worked with an "old-time" librarian who became an FLA in the 1930s just by writing to the LA and asking for one (it arrived by return of post!). So let's be thankful that ALA and FLA at least mean something a bit more positive today!

However, the problem remains that Chartership is supposed to be evidence of one's competence as a librarian, and is therefore one's ticket to mobility around the profession. Yet it remains the case that in my sector, namely industry, it means absolutely nothing to the employer, who will accord librarians the same status as any other "clerical" employee.

As someone who hasn't got to the stage of studying for a qualification yet because of debts from my first degree, it seems to me that Chartership is largely a waste of effort - I frequently see posts advertised demanding chartered status, yet offering no more money than I am currently earning as a Library Assistant. The minimum recommended pay for chartered librarians seems to be too low, especially considering the relative difficulty of getting funding for a postgraduate qualification, plus the time spent studying and then chartering.

I would love to be able to move on professionally, but even after working at LA HQ for a few months, I'm not convinced that it's worth it. Or is this a deliberate move to make librarianship a career for the priveleged few who can afford it?

I would be interested to hear of plans for other qualification routes - it sounds like an opportunity to make the profession more inclusive.

To add further to the 'Chartering' debate, it has always seemed to me, reading LA Appointments, that the sectors that seem to most recognise and use chartering standards (School, Public and University Libraries) are also the worst offenders in the low pay stakes. Conversely (and inconsistently) the better paid jobs in industry, etc, ask only for postgrad qualifications. Coming, as I do, from a country (Australia) that asks librarians only for postgrad qualifications, it has always struck me as adding insult to injury for the LA to assist employers to insist on extra educational commitment to inch their librarians a little forward along an already appallingly low salary scale.

I have asked other professionals in my organisations (lawyers, doctors, marketing, finance, publishing, IT) about what their professional associations do. For those that do have a chartering process (all except publishing and IT), it is recognised pretty much across the board by all employers, and very definitely ties in with pay and promotional opportunity. I wasn't rude enough to ask them about non-chartered (qualifications only) rates of pay, but I would guess that they would usually be better than Library rates.

It seems to me that the LA needs to concentrate first on setting industry standards at postgraduate qualification level, so that people are not hired as 'Librarians' without having a postgrad dip.(and a corresponding rate of pay). Then, if we ever raise our status to the level enjoyed by other professionals, we can look at adding the subtleties of chartering and accreditation.

Personally I would argue that chartership is worth it, and I say that as someone who has never worked in the sectors where it has traditionally been a route to career progression or salary increase (public and education sectors). John is right that corporate bodies have no idea what it is. Now this is a shame and isn't going to get us that salary rise or promotion as a result of it, and changing that lack of awareness would be excellent. But the point of the charter should be that our own development and marketability is our own business far more than it is that of our organisation. Our organisations will do what is in line with the aims and objectives of the organisation, those are not going to be the same ones as our personal aspirations and training wants. The Charter can be used as a way of benchmarking your own development so that your activities work for what you personally want to achieve in addition to your organisational responsibilities.
The problems come in that a) awareness of what it entails in employing organisations is not high enough; b) Some of the ones who recognise it will now argue that it's all very worthy but they can't afford to pay more for it anyway; c) it can be argued that it showed your competence at date 'x' when you gained your certificate but not necessarily your current competence (where the voluntary revalidation comes in); d) if you're feeling professionally disillusioned with other things that seem far more concrete (pay and status etc.) then someone just extolling the virtues of CPD is probably going to be frustrating. But if you're not Chartering for your organisation, do it for yourself, because it's not the only thing that benefits from the process. If the Charter isn't relevant enough to employers then we just need to make it more so. The promised LA competencies and job market research would help that a lot.

I'm grateful for Isobel's comments; particularly as I've just had a meeting with Sue Brown, our Director of Member Services, about moving forward with the research into skills and competencies - and about establishing a regular survey of pay and status in the employment marketplace. I agree that the Charter can be used (should be used?) as a benchmark of personal development - and I hope that the revalidation/CPD process (when we work out the details of the scheme; any views on that?) will assist with this - and will assist in giving our professional qualifications greater credibility with employers. This is a point which a number of you have raised: what is the relevance of the Charter in today's employment marketplace, particularly in the corporate sector; why is there not a clear salary differential between professional posts and posts not requiring professional competencies and qualifications. These are important questions which we have to address.

Part of the answer is to get a clearer and more comprehensive view of what is happening in the employment marketplace (on a personal and anecdotal level I agree with Kathryn' analysis; but we need objectively researched evidence).Part of it is to produce (and keep current) quidelines of good employment practice for all parts of the library and information employment sector - extending the work on Salary Guides which we already do.Part of it is about getting our qualifications benchmarked as the quality standard for our industry - which means linking them clearly to national standards (like NVQs) and national bodies (like the relevant National Training Organisation once DfEE has completed its review of NTOs); creating a broader range of routes to qualification (as Lizz says - hi Lizz) in order to make the profession more inclusive; and giving consideration to the point Kathryn makes about setting the professional standard at postgraduate level, as is done for example in the USA.

Final comment (for now); to Christina about the Salary Guides. Only one is web-enabled at present (on government libraries) and you'll find it by going from our home page to the section on "Job seeking and recruitment." The rest are (sadly) only available at the moment in printed form; we're making them e-available as we update them.

Thanks to everyone for your comments so far.

First of all, I would like to agree with John Welford that to many employers the chartered status does not mean anything (and I have been chartered for nearly eighteen years), much as I have pointed out the difference between being chartered and not being chartered - with one industrial employer in particular. Some have not heard of the Library Association until I've mentioned it.
My main point is to ask how the L.A. can justify not negotiating pay and conditions on behalf of its members when so many other professional associations do - e.g. the Royal College of Nurses , the Police Federation, N.A.T.F.H.E., and various other teaching bodies.

First of all, I would like to agree with John Welford that to many employers the chartered status does not mean anything (and I have been chartered for nearly eighteen years), much as I have pointed out the difference between being chartered and not being chartered - with one industrial employer in particular. Some have not heard of the Library Association until I've mentioned it.
My main point is to ask how the L.A. can justify not negotiating pay and conditions on behalf of its members when so many other professional associations do - e.g. the Royal College of Nurses , the Police Federation, N.A.T.F.H.E., and various other teaching bodies. Individuals can progress quite a long way by their own efforts, but there always is the need for strong representation and negotiation by their professional association on pay and status - something which no-one can do on their own.

The problem of low pay will surely only be solved by librarians, not by the LA. Salary guides tend to reflect the marketplace. The way to influence the market place is by service development, regradings, promotions and by making your worth better appreciated. No employer is going to respond to a remote professional association's message when their local experience of the profession is at odds with it.

The problem is we shouldn't be needing to prove 'credibility' to employers, we should have it automatically, many of us are more qualified than many of the people we work for. Unfortunately that's our knowledge and not their perception, and it's their perception that counts as information professionals do not set the salary scales. It's back to the old need for some real education to employers as to what our profession does and how that can directly integrate into their own business processes and needs. If we're no longer seen as 'support' or 'adjuncts' but core then we wouldn't be needing to have this discussion in the first place.
So it's external education as much as it is internal measures, useful as these look.
As to revalidation the response is obvious, don't sit in a room in LAHQ and work it out, open up the debate to everyone involved in it, have some real consultation process, don't just categorise everything 'to be announced pre-unification' and 'to be decided post-unification'.
This bulletin board is a good idea but it worries me the only people who know it exists are those on the Lists or informed of by members of them and that it's taking place weeks after the original fervent debate, very few of these people still seem to be here. This should be a general debate on the LA website proper advertised in the LAR that everyone knew about and could participate in.

I fully agree with the need to focus on qualifications and training. Standardising this at postgraduate qualification level is an interesting one and would - I'm sure - constitute a step in the right direction.
Nevertheless I do feel that qualifications and training only represent half of the problem. Another powerful strategy is for us to educate personnel officers, human resource specialists and those who control the purse strings to provide them with an understanding of the work librarians actually do. Those who undertake job evaluations and determine rates of pay will invariably consider training and qualifications and these will have significant influence on any decisions made. However, they will also look at the nature and - crucially - the level of the work undertaken. In the public library sector all local authorities operate in a slightly different way and this in itself is part of the problem. In my admittedly limited experience it is misunderstandings and out-dated images of the work librarians actually do that contribute to holding salaries down. Senior officers from other departments often view libraries with bemused detachment, until that is they gain an insight into what we actually do. When this occurs their reactions range from mild surprise to stunned amazement. Libraries are now placed to play a major role in several key government agendas notably lifelong learning, e-government and regeneration. This coupled with the onset of the People's Network, the need for ECDL and the implementation of the Library Standards (albeit in watered-down form) provide an ideal opportunity for Library Services to raise their profile, enhance understanding and create an environment in which objective re-evaluation of library posts and salaries is possible.
I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not saying it will always work in our favour. It's also dependant on those of us in senior positions being prepared to lobby on behalf of library staff.
The LA has a clear role here in collating and disseminating information from across the country, offering advice and encouraging discussion (as it's done today!).

As a chartered librarian working in a School Library I find that our status is very low on the professional scale, with many schools looking to employ "someone to run the library" on Scale 2/3. Very often it is women with children looking for jobs where they can have school holidays that take these jobs. Teachers and Senior management have often not heard of the Library Association and don't know what professional librarians are! The Library association should be pushing more to raise the status of librarians, and I think the NOF ICT training will help towards this.

Some local authorities are better thatn others at giving school librarians status, but I feel that a lot of school librarians need more backing from the Library Association.

I am a qualified librarian currently working in London in the financial sector. I am looking to move to Cornwall within the next few months, and am horrified by the levels of pay being offered for graduate, professional jobs. In fact I'm being forced to consider an alternative career. I'm sure many other librarians have the same problem.
Maybe the reason for the drop in student numbers in Library and Information Departments is that, especially with large student loans to pay off, librarians salaries just aren't attractive enough.
The LA should have done something about this a long time ago.

I can't agree with Isabel Hood that we are owed credibility automatically. You earn credibility. If employers' perceptions are wrong, the only people who can correct them effectively are the employees. If you're not seen as core, a leaflet from the LA won't change things.

I think that the vast majority of the jobs in the LA Record are shockingly underpaid, therefore I recently got an information job through a non-library job agency, and I am now quite happy with my level of pay.
What I find even more difficult to understand is the amount of money I will have to pay for my membership of the LA - I can compare it with another professional organisation, the IEE, and if I am correct, to join the IEE I would have to pay less than a tenth of what I will have to pay to the LA.

Lots of interesting stuff - thanks everyone. I agree with Mike and with Isobel. Yes you do have to earn personal credibility as a practitioner on your own patch - but equally we need to educate employers (including HR people as Ian says, echoing something that was said by people this morning) about the range, complexity, and added value of our professional skills. A key question therefore is - what can the LA do to contribute to this process of educating employers. Ian mentions a number of important developments in the public library sector and we have four opportunities to educate/influence local authorities as employers: job evaluation (as I said this morning), the recently published Public Library Standards (which explicitly request the LA to do some work on skills and competences - hence the research which I also mentioned this morning), the evaluation of Annual Library Plans, and the processes of Best Value review and inspection. The LA is getting involved in all of these activities. SR5a mentions the situation of school librarians and I agree that this is a serious cause for concern. Again there are "pressure points" we can apply to government: through the action which government intends to take in response to the "Empowering the learning community" report (and I personally have been invited to participate in that work); and through maintaining the pressure on OFSTED (as we are doing) to recognise that school libraries are integral too, not ancillary to, the learning process. What I'm struggling with is - how do we extend our influence with employers in the corporate sector? Any advice?

Other specific points: yes Jacki, we certainly need to look at our subscription structure in comparison with that of other professional bodies - that's on the list of first-year actions for the new unified organisation (I'm fed up with calling it "the new unified organisation" - henceforth I'll call it the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals or ChILIP for short...); yes Anon there are parts of the country where rates of pay are lower than elsewhere - usually because of market forces (nice place to which people wish to relocate, plus a local labour force which is competing for scarce jobs); yes Isobel we need to get more people involved in initiatives like this - remember this is a first time experiment so we need to learn as we go; and yes we'll seek to involve as many people as possible in the revalidation discussion.

Final comment is on Trevor's point about negotiating pay and conditions. The right of negotiation (as opposed to consultation) is granted to recognised trade unions. NATFHE which you mention is one example - one I know well because I was an officer of the local NATFHE Branch when I was a college librarian. The LA is a professional body, not a trade union. The two are not mutually exclusive - there are examples in the health sector of professional bodies in fields allied to medicine which also negotiate on pay and conditions; and I've already asked a colleague in the TUC to explore this dual role and get back to me with more information. I'll explore this issue further tomorrow on the topic area which has the issue of trade unions in its heading.

Thanks to everyone. I have to go now in order to fulfil an important evening engagement. I'll be back tomorrow morning to catch up with other comments.

Bob,

A couple of suggestions in response for your request for potential ways of raising salary levels in the corporate environment. This debate is very topical for me as my manager has been trying, unsuccessfully, to negotiate a salary level for me which is more in line with similar positions in our company.

In general, I think you are on your own in the corporate world, and the salary you can wring out of your employer depends on how successfully you market your usefulness. Some things which could be helpful though:

1. Raise the salaries paid in other library sectors. I inherited the 'librarian' tag from my predecessor and, although I am proud of what I do and would hate to see the term 'librarian' disappear, it is proving a millstone in the corporate environment. Although my responsibilities probably justify a higher salary grading within my company's internal structure, strict adherance to the structure is pretty woolly once you get beyond the basic, easily definable range. It is quite easy for HR to discover that, in Library terms, I am actually very well paid and this lowers my bargaining power considerably.

2. It would be useful to have corporate scales comparing like skills with like. Corporate libraries are usually small shows and the range of activities is correspondingly wide, but there must be a range of activities that cross boundaries. It is particularly useful, I find, to emphasise the IT, Information Management component - we are most of us inputting into online research, website and internet management, project management, knowledge management - all highly regarded skills these days. It would be useful to have a breakdown of the money value of these types of skills in positions with names that come with less baggage.

3. Some guidance on negotiating skills would be useful. In particular assistance in valuing yourself properly at interview stage (coming from a low paid university job, to an undefined corporate salary didn't I just queer my chances when they asked me what I was earning in my previous job!), and tips on how to discover internal scales and use them to get a proper grading for your skills and contribution would be useful.

Many of the comments regarding the need to 'educate' our employers and promote our worth are sound in theory. However, there are employers out there who are simply not prepared to listen, who wish to get away with paying staff as little as possible and will not budge on the issue.

I have worked in a higher education library for 10 years. I am a subject librarian involved in teaching, I have sat on course validation panels and am actively involved in my designated academic department. I am qualified at postgraduate level, I am chartered and recently became a member of the Institute for Learning and Teaching. My salary is £13.5k. It is soul destroying. I have made exhaustive efforts to try to remedy this. I have provided senior management with documentary evidence of my contribution and of current salaries in other HE libraries. However, I have been told time and time again that my post is appropriately graded and that if I am not happy I should look elsewhere. I am appalled that an institution of this nature can treat highly qualified professional staff in such a dispensable manner. How can they get away with it?

I also find that I am disadvantaged when I apply for posts elsewhere. Prospective employers tend to take current salary level into consideration. Whenever I have attended interviews, employers are only prepared to pay the bottom of the salary range, notwithstanding my qualifications and experience. This is usually around £15k, well below the average graduate starting salary.

I feel extremely demoralised and undervalued. I have tried UNISON – they are not interested in helping. I am now considering leaving the profession as I believe that my skills will be better appreciated and rewarded in teaching – a profession which has regained much of its prestige thanks to effective lobbying from the appropriate bodies.

Bob – I am sure that I am not the only one in this position. What advice can you give me?

I tend to agree with Mike Roddham, although I think that the problem of proving professional credibility to an employeer goes deeper still.

Given the current 'information revolution', it seems strange to me that this is not adequately reflected in higher education Library courses.

The growth of the web and corporate intranets offers a superb opportunity for Librarians to rise to the challenge of leading the development of these resources. However, in my experience,
the average Librarian does not seem to have aquired these skills. I'm not just taking about the technical skills of web page development, but a more disturbing inability to apply 'traditional' library techniques to website and intranet management.

The US seem to have addressed this situation in fields such as information architecture, where Librarians are leading the way in developing strong corporate information systems.

As a consequence their contribution has been well rewarded in their pay packets!!!.

In order to expect higher rates of pay and increased professional recognition, we have to offer what the market wants now, not what it might have wanted twenty years ago.

The LA should take the lead in promoting the skills that are required in todays information economy. More importantly they should ensure that these skills are inculcated at the grass-root level - in the Library schools.

You have to earn respect!!

James, your story is all too familiar - of a librarian post in an academic institution requiring a complex and sophisticated range of skills (including teaching skills) which is undervalued by the institution; and which is, I presume, not designated as an academic-related post? Your description suggests the post should be seen as academic-related and I wonder therefore if NATFHE might be a better bet than UNISON? Rather than go into further personal detail in a public-domain discussion, why don't you write to me (or email me at bob.mckee@la-hq.org.uk) and I'll ask our Professional Adviser team to look into your case.

Kathryn, your points are realy helpful - thanks. We can offer courses on negotiating skills in our programme of training activities; we can build the points you make about valued skills into our guides of good practice for employers (as a development of the present Salary Guides); and we'll keep pressing to raise salary levels in other areas.

Andy, yes I agree: we need to build the web/intranet/info architecture stuff into our research into skills and competencies; into our training and CPD activities; and into the undergrad/postgrad courses which we accredit.

Your point, Andy, leads me to ask Kathryn a question: in the search for higher status in the corporate sector does the "I" word (information) carry greater weight than the "L" (librarian)? If so, will it help for you to be a member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals rather than of The Library Association?

Thanks everyone.

Bob,

You mention that in the next few months the LA intends to do a survey of the employment marketplace and commission research into skills and competency. What exactly does in the next few months mean? I remember you said exactly the same thing at the AGM of the North and South Thames Division of the Career Development Group in February.
Who will be carrying out this research and when and how will the results be available?

I had an unusual call the other day - an HR manager at another large company phoned to ask me what I would recommend as the salary level for a librarian he was about to employ. This was a chartered librarian with about three years' experience and who was arguing that the offered salary was too low.

My response was firstly to recommend that he contact the LA for a salary guide and then, at his insistence for a straight answer, suggest a salary range of £15-20K. This he accepted as reasonable - it was clear that the original offer was lower than this but that the librarian in question wanted something within the range I had mentioned.

To me, this incident raises a lot of questions, for example:

1. Is it a healthy or unhealthy trend for practising librarians to be asked to recommend salary levels for each other? Has anyone else had the same experience?
2. Was my suggestion too high or too low? I myself get £25k, but I've got a higher degree and 25 years experience, so I was loath to suggest a higher range for the person in question, although I'm sure they were worth it.
3. Would not the best option throughout the whole profession be for librarians to negotiate their own salaries individually by proving that they are worth what they suggest?

To expand on this final point - I did this once when I joined a US-based computer company on a temporary contract. "What shall we pay you?" they asked. "£14k pro rata", quoth I, hoping to get £12k (this was in 1988). "Fine", they said, "no problem". I wished I'd asked for £16K!

On the matter of corporate-sector librarians, it might be helpful for the LA to approach otehr professional bodies with members working for corporate employers.
It would be useful to find out if they influence pay and conditions for their members and - if so - how they approach it. Talking to other associations could be a profitable exercise in itself and may generate all sorts of ideas in a variety of different areas. Perhaps this already happens, I don't know....?
Associations that spring to mind are those for accountants, architects, engineers, surveyors, solicitors, purchasing officers and psychologists to name but a few....

Perhaps I can add the perspective of a p/g LIS student. When I entered the sector to complete my Graduate Trainee Year I was well aware of the low salary levels in the profession, and I think the same goes for my colleagues on the course. Many of us have decided to become information professionals in spite of low salary levels. If we had wanted to earn vast amounts of money then we could have done, simply by choosing another career.

It seems to me, that in the two years that I have been aware of professional issues, that the debate about low pay has gone round and round in circles but never resulting in any benefit for information professionals. On the basis of this experience I remain sceptical about the possibility of tangible change resulting from this discussion. You only have to look to other sectors to gain the impression that only high-profile industrial action changes salary levels n the professions.

While I'm in this slightly cynical frame can I suggest that salaries really have a lot to do with market forces. If you can get a well qualified p/g with substantial experience for 13.5K then why pay any more? Until there is an appreciable shortage of professionals then salaries are unlikely to rise in order to attract them.

Nonetheless, I was shocked to learn how little the managers I worked for during my trainee year were paid for the high level of responsibility they had to carry. If they had been doing managerial jobs in almost any other sector then they would have exceeded the threshold past which they would have been required to pay off their student loans! Having already deferred mine for two years I don't anticipate having to pay them off for many years to come.

I think you may have a point Bob, in that the term 'information' carries more weight than 'Librarian'.
Maybe its time to put forward the radical suggestion that the term 'Librarian' be dropped, as it tends to carry an awfull amount of stereotypical baggage.
Consequently we should reinvent ourselves and adopt a new title, that more accurately reflects the information demands of today?

Shouldn't that be "Inaction on low pay"?

We health librarians are being poorly paid and the LA is doing next to nothing. In the NHS other occupations appear to be getting upgradings on the nod.

When I was having difficulty over an upgrade (more than deserved, but no money), the LA told me to send an e-mail! A colleague advised me not to use them (they seemed annoyed that we were worrying them, she said), but try UNISON.

The LA takes issue of low pay and status seriously - what proportion of LA income is spent on the issue?

Salary guides - useless unless you try to enforce, which the LA doesn't.

500 pay related enquiries a year - if the proportion of easy to difficult enquiries is like those in libraries, then the volume of complex work is low.

Reference to "qualified staff" - if the LA is still fighting over this basic stuff, it's not making much impression.

"We intend, in the next few months..." plus proactive involvement and outcome measurement (discussion on editorial policy) - why hasn't the LA been taking this kind of action for years?

Editorial policy - the number of low pay jobs increases, so it hasn't worked. Don't publish.

The LA is a democracy - I've growled away for 25 years in the Record that it isn't. If it is, then why hasn't low pay come up before through the "democratic process"? And why should people be worried that the issue won't get anywhere? An after 12 noon today . . .?

Our subs go up as a percentage of our pay, but if the LA was really succeeding, then our pay would rise, and the subs could stay the same, or go down. The progressive screwing of the membership for increased subs is evidence of the failure of the LA over low pay.