“It feels like David and Goliath...but if David didn’t have a slingshot,” Booth said. “The union leadership is not arming the membership.”

Jaeger said that while HUCTW’s ultimate goal is to build a great library, the union is also striving to improve relations between workers and library management.

“We’d like to rebuild some trust and build some better relationships between union members and the key management leaders of the transition,” Jaeger said. “I think a lot of our members are quite deeply frustrated, and union leaders are as well. The state of the library workplace at this point, as far as we can tell, is basically chaos and demoralized disarray.”

—Staff writer Dan Dou can be reached at ddou@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Samuel Y. Weinstock can be reached at ddou@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction.

CORRECTION: Feb. 24

An earlier version of this article stated that Jeffrey W. Booth, a Harvard University Library employee and member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, proposed membership-wide meetings of the union which would be convened by the University. In fact, Booth suggested that such meetings would be convened by union leadership.