Pros
- no experience needed - once you're a Page, you can apply for full-time positions that pay a living wage with just a high school degree - paid domestic violence leave, which saved me when I had to escape my abusers - wage tiers - for most positions your wage goes up each year even at entry level, due to strong union negotiations - pension plan for part-timers - I've been working for over 3 years part-time and qualified for the pension plan a few months ago! - flexible HR - when I got a new position while on leave to do an internship at a different employer, HR moved the start date so that I could start after I finished the internship - strong accommodation system - supervisors will accommodate as much as they can (disabilities, student school schedules, emergencies, etc.) The norm here is to accommodate instead of fire an employee - strong job security - as a public sector job and one where the duty to accommodate is taken seriously - strong work/life boundaries - starting on time and leaving when your shift ends is strongly reinforced. No one wants to work overtime here. No checking work emails outside of work. No taking work home. - paid training - when Pages are trained to do Public Service Assistant (PSA) work, they are paid the PSA wage which is about $15 higher. This also applies to any job duty a Page does that is for a different position - mandatory and optional training - about anti-racism, Indigenous Peoples, disability accommodation, how to help homeless people, how to help Ukrainian refugees, etc. This employer takes diversity seriously.
Cons
- you can't apply online, only in person, to each branch you want to work at because they don't share applications with other branches - Pages (entry level) cannot work full time - there are some "bad branches" - library branches where the work culture is not the best, including cruel colleagues and supervisors, and branch heads with unrealistic workload expectations especially if they've never been a Page - lack of transparency regarding how to move up within the library. Lots of job opportunities but Pages usually only find out about them if they're posted on the internal job board, where they close about a week later. However the library is working on better transparency. - a physical job where you are on your feet for almost the whole shift, pushing, lifting, squatting, kneeling, etc. - it's customer service, where customers sometimes yell at Pages and expect them to explain Library problems that are not a Page's responsibility to solve