The Chicago Tribune reports today (September 6, 2009; here) that nearly half the city's library "pages" (staffers who reshelve books) were laid off recently, leading to stacks and stacks of unshelved books in libraries throughout the city. Certainly this is just one more example of local spending cutbacks, driven by serious budget problems in our nation's cities, counties, and states. But, wait, there's more.....if you read to the end of the article, you find this:

But library volunteers aren't allowed to do work that paid union workers would normally do.

Library administrators said their hands are tied with regards to bringing in free help.

"We're definitely very, very busy, and not having as much staff isn't great in that situation," Lednicer said. "Obviously, more hands is more help but we have to abide by the union contract, as well."

So, in other words, volunteers can't show up to help out--even with a fairly low-skilled, routine task such as reshelving books. That seems silly--it's not as if the task at hand requires a lot of skill, talent, or experience--and, frankly, it's not as if the consequences of having a few misshelved books are so terrible that they would outweigh the benefits of enjoying many correctly shelved books. Bad PR for the Mayor, too, in my view--he can't even get union contracts that make sense here--so how will all the contracts with skilled workers pan out?