City Hall’s Mistreatment of Municipal Volunteers and Employees is Becoming a Trend

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10 responses to “City Hall’s Mistreatment of Municipal Volunteers and Employees is Becoming a Trend”

1. 

   Walt Thompson

   May 15, 2025

   Has become

   No visible changes.

   City Council President Ed Cameron is allegedly complicit.

   When will 14 staffers who signed the defamatory statement be discharged? Employee Handbook lists defaming and conduct unbecoming as reasons for termination of employment.

   Anyone?
   Anyone?

   Reply
   1. 

      Bradley

      May 15, 2025

      Calling for the wholesale firing of 14 public servants who stood up for themselves in public? Seems to me it’s the former volunteers and not the Mayor who are acting like Trump and his DOGE cronies.

      Once again, I’ll take the word of fourteen library employees over a politically motivated and biased report that interviewed a whopping eleven people to reach its conclusions. Considering that’s three fewer than the number of librarians that signed the letter and the volunteers were characterized as “eager to be heard and share their experience,” I’m willing to bet I know in which direction the make-up of that eleven skewed.

      That’s not even getting into the fact that the Head Librarian was not interviewed as part of this report. How do you reach a conclusion about whether a person was bullied without hearing from the person in question? Whether she wanted to participate is irrelevant – this should automatically disqualify any result other than “inconclusive.”

      Beyond that, the summary of the report seems to dismiss bullying based on a subjective opinion on what that would entail, saying that “to respond to the same inquires repeatedly and to have other work suffer” should be an expected outcome. To me, that’s a ridiculous statement to make wholesale without considering degree. To have inquiries made to you on a repeated-enough basis to have work suffer sounds a lot like harassment to my ears.

      Regarding the other accusations directed at the Mayor’s office, I have no personal opinion. But I’m willing to trust the employees of the clerk’s office. Similarly, I’m willing to trust the word of the fourteen librarians who were given short shrift in the half-hearted investigation. If volunteers are calling for their jobs now, I can only say that their original union grievance appears like it may have been very well founded. In a country that is at war against working people on behalf of a privileged class, this is one more front where labor is disrespected.

      Reply
2. 

   Eliza

   May 15, 2025

   Well Walt, I see “the actions and inaction of the City, through the Mayor, the Mayor’s [former] Chief of Staff and the Human Resources Director, directly contributed to or created the situation that allowed for (the volunteers’) dismissal and defamation” and “The public release” (press) to blame. Not the library staff.

   Union grievances are allowed and actually critical to our democracy.

   Reply
3. 

   Debora D’Ambrosii

   May 15, 2025

   49 previous tickets ..why doesn’t the Mayor just pay them for his friend

   Reply
4. 

   Jack

   May 15, 2025

   In response to the comment that the report is skewed in favor of the volunteers because they dominated the interviews, and that the NPL director who resigned after less than a year in office was ignored:

   That director was invited but declined to be interviewed or to answer questions via phone or email. Is the commenter seriously suggesting that by refusing to answer questions, someone at the center of a controversy can render any investigation of it “invalid”?

   The mayor’s replacement for her and the long-time director who preceded her were among the 11 interviewees. As were the mayor and two of his staff, plus two ranking members of the NPL staff and one “Labor Counsel,” as she is labelled in the report.

   That’s eight of the eleven, leaving the archivist who was forced out, a historian who frequented the Archival Center, and exactly one (1) volunteer.

   As for the absence of staff: The investigator accepted and considered many written statements and documents, and her report tells us that the 14 staff who signed the charges thought it would be an internal document going no further than the NPL board of directors. Stands to reason that, having already been burned by people they trusted, they were less willing to talk to an investigator than the vols.

   And regarding labor being disrespected: Only one person was run out of a job, and it was not any of the 14 staffers.

   But the most bizarre comment here is about “repeated questions.” The investigator tells us that the staffers offered this as examples of harrassment–but she also tells us that the questions and requests for information went unanswered. The commenter hears the first half, but disregards the rest.

   Where I come from, the eager willingness to answer questions indicates people who want to reveal the truth. Reluctance to do so is indicative of those who would rather it stay hidden.

   Reply
   1. 

      Bradley

      May 15, 2025

      Jack – I said an investigation that failed to speak to the majority of the people involved should be considered “inconclusive,” not “invalid.” I would encourage a close reading of comments before responding. Inconclusive is a perfectly valid result of a report if it fails to investigate the information necessary to return a verdict (as is the case here).

      My comments about labor being disrespected were in response to the comment by Walt above, who called for the firing of all 14 library staffers. According to your comment, they had no knowledge that the document would be anything but internal, which puts Walt’s comment in an even worse light. I actually agreed with you – just as you pointed out how we should heed the Clerk’s office complaints, I thought we should heed the Library staffers’ grievances.

      And whether the repeated questions had been answered yet is really irrelevant. As any parent with a child in the backseat asking “Are we there yet?” over and over would know: sometimes the intent of a question is simply to pester. If you ask again before waiting for an answer, and do that so much that the work of a public servant suffers? That’s harassment, regardless of the investigator’s personal opinion.

      As for who was willing to be interviewed and who not, I think you said it best yourself: “having already been burned by people they trusted, [the library staffers] were less willing to talk to an investigator than the vols.”

      I suppose people can sense when a process is tilted against them unfairly. To me, eagerness to be interviewed has less to do with truth and more to do with who thinks they have something to gain from this whole unending saga.

      Reply
5. 

   Albie

   May 16, 2025

   This investigation seems less than comprehensive, to put it mildly. City council spent $12,000 for this person to…talk to eleven people?

   What really bothers me is her calling parts of the librarians’ letter false/misleading, without any clarifying comments. How did she ascertain that? Echoing what someone said above, I don’t blame the librarians one bit for staying out of this. They made a good faith effort to raise an alarm internally, and they’ve gotten nothing but trouble for their efforts.

   That said, I would LOVE to hear what they know.

   Reply
6. 

   Jack Garvey

   May 17, 2025

   Albie: She exchanged emails with numerous staffers and volunteers in addition to having interviews–some in person, some by Zoom–with eleven people. What you may have read is merely the summary of a much longer report which does clarify why charges were false or misleading. When she asked the staffers for evidence, they sent her emails they received from vols that merely asked questions or requested information. then they called the requests repetitive, leaving out the fact that they didn’t answer the initial questions or requests–hence, the repetition.

   Futhermore, the intent of the investigation from the start was not so much what happened in the library, but how it was handled by City Hall. The 20+ page, small-font report–especially items 30 to 49 in the timeline–makes very clear reasons for the blame placed on the mayor, his former chief-of-staff, and the director of human resources. Most comprehensively, it illustrates how City Hall’s “failure,” as it says in the conclusion, has allowed this “to drag out, in the arena of public opinion, at the expense of all involved, including the library staff…”

   Reply
   1. 

      Albie

      May 20, 2025

      Thanks, Jack, but I simply have no confidence in this person’s findings. First, she said volunteers were unfairly dismissed. The volunteers were dismissed because they were doing union work and the union filed a grievance. What’s unfair about that?

      Second, I don’t buy for one second that the bullying/harassment was simply repetitive emails. Have you met a librarian? They deal with the public day in and day out. They are not going to leave a job because someone sent persistent emails. I’m calling shenanigans on this whole thing.

      Reply
7. 

   Warren Russo

   May 23, 2025

   Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
   When will the City Council step up and remove the incompetent Mayor Rearend from his position? This is one mayor that Newburyport did not need and cannot afford.

   Reply