Shannon Hansen, a striking library worker in Halifax, sees 3 or 4 people overdose a week at the Halifax North Memorial Public Library.

But Hansen said librarians deal with a lot of serious issues.

“Whatever the situation is coming to us, we deal with, because we’re the last stop for everybody, no matter what is going on socially, whether it’s housing issues, whether it’s drug issues,” he said.

“We’re the ones who are going to help you out when you’re in that bad spot, and we’re the safe place for you to come, where you can pull yourself together and figure out what you want to do.”

He and about 340 other employees went on strike Monday to call for better pay after negotiations with library management reached an impasse. Management offered to increase wages by 3.5 per cent in the first year of their four-year offer. In the second, third and fourth years, they would increase pay by 25 cents an hour and raise overall wages by 3 per cent.

Whatever issue it is—an overdose, a mental health crisis, helping a family of four find a new place to live after they’ve been evicted, someone who was recently sexually assaulted, or helping seniors with their finances—there’s another person you have to help right after.

It’s exhausting. But you can’t be burnt out, even if you feel like it, because someone needs help, he said.

As the strike continues, Hansen worries about what people who need the library are going to do.

People who might overdose at the library, when they do it somewhere else, they might not have someone there to wake them up, he said. They could lie there for hours until it’s too late to wake them up.

“This is why we want to be back at work, because we know what’s going on out there.”

Financial struggles for librarians

Librarians want to help others but often can’t afford food or a place to live for themselves, he said.

He knows librarians who use a food bank, who can’t move out of their parents’ home or who don’t have any home, sleeping from couch to couch, sleeping in a car, he said.

People all over the place, not just the librarians, are stuck just trying to keep their heads above water, he said. No one’s getting ahead right now.

Hansen said the offers from library management are not enough.

“It’s hard to care for everybody when you’re drowning,” he said.

Lots of public support

Four days into the strike, Heather Doepner said she’s glad that they’ve gotten so much public support when library workers are usually the ones supporting the community.

“I’m feeling really good four days in. At first, I didn’t know whether there’d be a lot of support from the public, and we’re definitely seeing that lots of people have come out to support us,” said Doepner.

Heather Doepner, a library worker, holds her sign up outside of the Halifax North Memorial Public Library on Aug. 29, 2024. (Jacob Moore/Acadia Broadcasting)

She said lots of people are asking how to support them on the picket lines or how to send letters to elected officials and library management.

Library worker Dominique Nielsen says the energy of the strike keeps building, and seeing so much support is really wonderful.

While on strike, workers aren’t getting paid, but that’s a risk they’re willing to take, she said.

“I think that financial stress would be on the minds of a lot of our members, but I mean, it was on our minds prior to going on strike as well,” said Nielsen.

She hopes that keeping up the energy will help workers get a fair contract and feel less of those financial stresses.

A young girl who frequently visits the library felt strongly about the building being closed.

“I think that they should open it up, because I’m kind of missing Roblox,” she said.

Doepner believes that when library workers band together, they can choose what action they want to take and do it.

“We have a reputation of being sweet and nice people, because mostly we can be. Mostly we are. But make no mistake, all of these people and I all have backbones of steel.”