[excerpt from an email by Maurice J. (Mitch) Freedman dated October 11, 2001-a month before the Freedman Better Salaries & Pay Equity Task Force met for its first official conference at the Crowne Plaza Hotel-White Plains, NY]

I am in the process of forming a task force that will study some of the
issues that [library workers] have raised. Without
tying the hands of the task force, the following are the products I
anticipate will be produced.

1. A toolkit for every library worker on how to go about improving one's
salary and achieving pay equity. Included in the toolkit will be:

2. Research & data relevant to library worker salaries and compensation
-- comparative, historical, regional, etc.

3. Case studies where salary improvement and pay equity campaigns
succeeded and failed--and why.

4. Strategies and approaches toward achieving better salaries,
compensation, and pay equity.

5. Scripts and sample dialogs for advocating for better salaires, etc.
in public, academic, school, and special library settings.

6. A series of roadshow institutes to educate and promote local library
worker empowerment.

7. One or more major programs and activities at the 2003 Annual Meeting,
if not sooner.

8. A theme title. (this won't require a whole bunch of work)

There is no way that the task force's work can be done without a careful
examination of the role of unions in this process.

The hope is that the toolkit will help library workers at any level to
negotiate and/or struggle on their individual or collective behalfs for
improving their compensation. ALA cannot negotiate local salaries. But
it is the goal of my presidency that the Association will come up with
the wherewithal to empower individuals and collections of individuals to
advocate on their own behalf.

The task force will build on the work done by Nancy Kranich's Status of
Librarians Committee and will keep a liaison--at the minimum--with the
ALA Pay Equity Committee.