Fiona writes \”In response to a win in the IRC for NSW public service librarians, a very negative response has appeared in the April 2 Opinion column in the Sydney Morning Herald by Padraic P. McGuinness.
The article is not online so here are a couple of gems from it –
Geologists have to undertake tertiary studies of a much more rigorous kind than the mixture of elementary skills and soft “science\” fed to would-be librarians. They have to participate in their training in exhausting field expeditions and most of them to further their careers have to spend long spells in uncomfortable remote areas. It is a tough life. There is no reason why women should not become geologists, but clearly it is not the kind of work that many women have wanted to do. By contrast, librarianship is a genteel occupation with regular hours where work is sedentary and comfortable. \”
and
\”The skills ascribed to librarians by the IRC, drawing on the submission by counsel for the Public Service Association, are those which will be acquired in the course of tertiary education in the humanities by almost anyone fit to get a degree; the skills are usually quite trivial matters of classification and indexing. For the rest, it is simply book handling, book issuing and searching databases all easy to learn. \”
Fiona writes \”In response to a win in the IRC for NSW public service librarians, a very negative response has appeared in the April 2 Opinion column in the Sydney Morning Herald by Padraic P. McGuinness.
The article is not online so here are a couple of gems from it –
Geologists have to undertake tertiary studies of a much more rigorous kind than the mixture of elementary skills and soft “science\” fed to would-be librarians. They have to participate in their training in exhausting field expeditions and most of them to further their careers have to spend long spells in uncomfortable remote areas. It is a tough life. There is no reason why women should not become geologists, but clearly it is not the kind of work that many women have wanted to do. By contrast, librarianship is a genteel occupation with regular hours where work is sedentary and comfortable. \”
and
\”The skills ascribed to librarians by the IRC, drawing on the submission by counsel for the Public Service Association, are those which will be acquired in the course of tertiary education in the humanities by almost anyone fit to get a degree; the skills are usually quite trivial matters of classification and indexing. For the rest, it is simply book handling, book issuing and searching databases all easy to learn. \”
\”It will be interesting to see what harm will be wrought by the equally silly decision of the NSW Industrial Relations Commission to grant up to 25 per cent salary increases to librarians on the basis of a specious argument about the alleged depression of wages in female gender-specific occupations. This is based on an unproven historical effect, and on an invalid comparison with a male-dominated occupation of all things, geologists. The disparity between the two is obvious.
The full decision of the IRC is now available online
\”
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