Precarious Employment in the Library Sector

Abstract

This article presents the results the VÖB team working on „precarious employment in the library sector“ has gathered from 2016–2018. Since a bottom-up-initiative resulted in a panel discussion at the Austrian Library Congress 2015 in Vienna, the VÖB executive committee decided to establish a working group on this subject. The activities focused on developing a survey in order to get information about atypical/precarious employment in the library sector. The survey was conducted by Gallup and more than 600 colleagues participated. The results are to a great extent presented and commented on in this article. Finally observations on possible measures to be taken to improve atypical/precarious employment are made.