Things have been a little chaotic in the Houston Public Library system.
Last month, staff announced two previously halted library projects will indeed begin moving forward. Meanwhile, Houston Landing has been reporting over the past year about what library employees have called a toxic workplace culture.
According to city data, the library’s turnover was more than double the city average in 2022 at 26.6%. So what exactly is going on?
Maggie Gordon, a columnist for Houston Landing, said she started looking into the library system after working on a story about a cashless printing system that was disenfranchising users.
“What was being presented to me by library leadership and city government was that library employees didn’t understand the policies and weren’t properly helping users. And library employees started saying to me, ‘That’s a complete lie,’” Gordon said. “And from there, I had a bunch of people who work at the library say, ‘hey, this keeps happening,’ and that I should really look into a toxic workplace there.”
Gordon pulled city records, including the attrition rates and exit interviews of all of the employees who had left over the past few years.
“I found that more than 1 in 8 employees said one of the big reasons they left, they literally checked the box that said hostile work environment,” Gordon said. “And from there we started digging and employees came out of the woodwork to talk to me about issues they had at the library, issues with leadership.
“In March of this year, about nine months into the investigation, our new mayor, John Whitmire, terminated the head of the library and then the No. 2 person in charge, and both of whom had been really central in our investigation, in our reporting.”
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Gordon said several formal complaints were raised and the union for city employees has been involved.
“There’s an interim executive director at the library system who has told me that she respects the way that people who work at the library spoke out and that she’s really trying to fix the workplace culture,” Gordon said. “But truly, it’s only been a few months since the new leadership has come in, and it remains to be seen whether we’re going to see a complete turnaround there.”
Gordon is also aware of at least one lawsuit against the library and its leadership, as well as investigations brought to the city’s Office of the Inspector General and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
“The library here employs about 400 people. I have heard from more than 50,” Gordon said. “It’s an alarming chorus saying this is a deep systemic issue here in the library, and I’m very inclined to believe those employees, both current and former.”
Gordon said while it is hard to measure the impact of library staff culture on patrons, there likely is an effect being felt beyond staff members.
“If you’re having problems at work, you might not be doing your job as well. And I also think that sometimes the ways in which this is playing out politically within the system can become a distraction for leadership,” Gordon said. “We have seen in the last several years a limiting of library hours, issues like I have reported on most recently, [they’ll say] this library is deteriorating, it needs to be closed and then a snapback decision — no, let’s open it.
“And just a lot of whiplash back and forth, and some of that it feels – and I have heard from several sources – is because of deeper issues that provide distractions at work and keep people from being able to do their job to their best ability.”
