The first serious frost of October has settled over Thunder Bay, and along the picket lines in front of the city’s public library branches, more than seventy striking workers are stamping their boots against the cold, their breath forming clouds as they chant and wave signs. The strike, which has pulled the majority of the library’s unionized staff off the job, has never been just about the numbers on a paycheque—although the numbers matter a great deal. It is also about the story the employer tells the public. And that story, the workers say, took a damaging and deceptive turn on Monday, when library CEO Richard Togman issued a widely circulated memo promising “a clear look at the facts surrounding library workers’ contract and benefits.” On the picket line and in the union offices, the response was immediate and frustrated. “The memo left the impression that everyone working at the Library earns six figures,” said Margaret Demillo, President of CUPE 3120, the union local that represents sixty-eight of the striking workers. “But the only ones making $100,000 a year or more at the Library are management.” The problem, Demillo and her colleagues argued, was not what Togman said outright, but what he left out: although his memo referred to “library workers,” it devoted its attention almost exclusively to Librarians—the most educated, highest-paid corner of the workforce. Deryk Fournier, President of CUPE 87, which represents the librarians themselves, was blunt about the math. “There are only seven Librarians across four large branches in the TBPL,” he said. “That’s only about nine percent of a unionized workforce of seventy-five people. The Employer’s memo completely erases all the other workers who, like the Librarians, play a critical role in making our Library a success.”
To understand why the memo stung so badly, it helps to look at the actual numbers in the collective agreements—documents the union says are available to anyone who wants them, either on its website or through the Ministry of Labour. Thunder Bay’s librarians earn between $84,000 and $89,000 a year. That is real money, no question. But as Fournier explained, it is actually slightly below the provincial average for librarians, and that average is calculated against places like Toronto and Mississauga, where the cost of living in some categories is significantly different than in Northern Ontario—where groceries, heating oil, and housing prices have all climbed steeply in recent years. Librarians earn a higher wage not because they sit in an ivory tower, but because the job demands a minimum of six years of post-secondary education, including a Master of Library and Information Science or the equivalent. Still, even with those credentials, they are nowhere near the six-figure salaries Togman’s memo implied, and more importantly, they make up just a sliver of the workforce. The average salary for all seventy-five unionized workers is between $50,000 and $60,000 a year, and the union says some workers in entry-level and part-time support roles bring home less than $30,000 annually. Those are the people who scrub the floors after storytime, troubleshoot the public computers, and restock the shelf where a child will find their first chapter book. They are the ones outside in the cold, and they are the ones whose livelihoods would be most threatened by the concessions the employer is demanding. The memo’s framing painted everyone with the brush of the most privileged few, and that, to the workers, wasn’t just misleading—it was insulting.
The debate over the memo quickly widened into a debate over a different set of numbers: those attached to the people running the library. Togman has made a point of presenting himself as a guardian of public money, but the Library Board has so far declined to disclose his salary or the compensation packages of other senior managers. “Togman’s concern for the taxpayer apparently doesn’t include the massive salaries he and other managers make,” Demillo said. “If he really wants to be transparent, he should disclose those sums immediately, including any wage increases they get from year to year.” The push for transparency is not abstract. The union’s account of Togman’s own hire paints a telling picture: when he was brought on in 2022, the Board changed the title of his position from “CEO/Head Librarian” to plain “CEO,” reportedly because he did not possess the library-science credentials the job had traditionally required. Then, rather than leave the library without a professional at the helm, the Board created a new non-union “Head Librarian” role to perform the duties that the previous job had contained. The practical result, according to the union, is that the library is now paying two people six-figure salaries to do the work that one person used to do—and no one in senior management is talking about that cost in public, let alone opening the books on it. For context, Togman’s predecessor had no such reticence; he posted on Facebook that he earned at least $147,000 a year in the role. “The public deserves to know how much management compensation eats up the Library’s budget,” said Fournier. “If the CEO really wants transparency, he should start with himself.”
While the wages of front-line workers are central to the dispute, the most bitter disagreement in the bargaining room has turned on benefits. The union says it has repeatedly requested the Library’s Master Plan of Benefits—the document that would show how benefit costs and usage are distributed across all employees—so that union negotiators could see precisely what the employer is dealing with. The employer has said no. That refusal, the union argues, undercuts the Library’s central claim that it cannot afford to preserve the hard-won benefits workers currently enjoy. “The Employer’s claim that it can’t afford to retain our members’ hard-won benefits is just not credible when they won’t show us the numbers,” Demillo said. “It’s even less believable while they’re spending $8 million to renovate the Waverley branch.” The renovation is a useful point of comparison: $8 million will transform the library building into a modern, accessible community hub, but a fair benefits package for the workers inside it would cost a tiny fraction of that sum. The union’s wage proposals, meanwhile, are not pulled from thin air; they are pegged to real contracts won at comparable public libraries across Ontario. In Milton, library workers recently negotiated 3% annual increases in a three-year deal. Brampton workers achieved 3% a year in a four-year contract. And in Ajax, workers secured raises of 3.75%, 3.25%, and 3.25% over three years, plus premium pay for Sunday shifts. By those standards, Thunder Bay workers are not asking to leap ahead of the pack—they are asking to keep pace with a provincial norm that their own employer refuses to acknowledge. “Thunder Bay library workers are just seeking a fair deal, like other library workers have achieved across Ontario,” Fournier said. “Thunder Bay shouldn’t be an outlier where we buck the trend, and force our workers to accept cuts and concessions.”
The fight is not staying on the picket line. On Wednesday evening, community supporters are expected to join a coordinated phone action to engage the Mayor and City Council directly about the strike—and, just a week before municipal elections, to make clear that voters in Thunder Bay are watching which candidates defend good jobs and public services. The timing is deliberate. Library workers are hoping that the electoral spotlight will push elected officials to pressure the Library Board back to the table, or at least to demand the transparency the union has been denied. In the meantime, workers are encouraging Thunder Bay residents to contact Library Board members themselves, asking them to withdraw the concession demands and return to good-faith bargaining. The deeper strategy is about changing the narrative. Public libraries have become one of the most visible, trusted public institutions in Canadian cities—a warm, welcoming, free space where families meet, kids read, seniors find company, and people without homes can come in from the cold. In Thunder Bay, with its long winters and stretched social services, the library is a lifeline as much as a place to check out a book. The people who make it happen—the community facilitators who run programs for newcomers, the network analysts who keep the computers running, the cleaners who keep it safe and welcoming—are not asking for the world; they are asking to be treated as essential members of the community, not as a line item to be squeezed. “Preserving our benefits would represent a tiny fraction of that multi-million-dollar budget,” Demillo said, returning to the $8-million question. If the library can find that kind of money for a renovation, the workers argue, it can find a fraction of it for the people who will welcome the public through those renovated doors.
Behind the press statements and the bargaining jargon, the heart of this strike is a collection of ordinary people who do extraordinary work in an institution too often taken for granted. CUPE 3120 represents the Library Assistants, Library Technicians, Custodians, Maintenance Persons, Cleaners, Network and Software Support Analysts, Community Facilitators, and Finance Staff of the Thunder Bay Public Library; CUPE 87-18, led by Fournier, represents the seven full-time librarians. Together they are holding what amounts to a moral line: that the library industry should not be a race to the bottom, and that management should not be allowed to cry poverty while concealing its own compensation and pouring millions into capital projects. Strike photos and videos have been made available for media and supporters at https://bit.ly/tblwfb, and those seeking more information can reach CUPE Communications Representative James Clark at 289-678-4894 or [email protected]. As municipal election day approaches, the strikers are betting that the public will take their side—not because the public is sentimental, but because the public uses the library and sees its value every week. The issue at stake isn’t just a union contract. It’s a question of who owns the story: the CEO and the Board, whose salary figures remain hidden, or the seventy-plus workers standing in full view of the city, asking for nothing less than honesty and fairness. The frost on the picket signs melts in the sun, the phones ring on Wednesday with community voices, and the workers keep walking. In Thunder Bay, the library belongs to everyone. The strikers are just demanding that the people who make it run are included in that “everyone.”