And interesting no political labor relations aside:

[Nicholas_J]

How much job risk is reasonable?


By JUDITH TIMSON
Wednesday, July 16, 2003 - Page C5



There are low-risk jobs and high-risk jobs, most fairly easy to identify. Police officers and soldiers, for example, are obviously in high-risk jobs, as are many construction workers. And while we would not, pre-SARS, have labelled all health care workers high-risk, we certainly do now.

Librarians, on the other hand, are emphatically low-risk professionals. Except for a freak accident -- getting hit by a falling book, perhaps -- no one would dream that being a librarian could expose one to a life-threatening risk.

Risk, and how it was perceived and handled, is what makes the stories of Nelia Laroza and Kellee Kaulback so interesting. The two women both worked in Toronto hospitals during the outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome, Ms. Laroza as a nurse on the orthopedic ward of North York General, and Ms. Kaulback as an information specialist in the library at Mount Sinai. Her job was to teach medical staff how to do information searches.

Because of the SARS crisis, risk dramatically entered their professional lives. Ms. Laroza, 51, a medical professional whose job it was to care for the ill and dying, took what she thought were adequate precautions, kept working, and paid with her life after she contracted SARS from a patient no one knew was infected. She died in early July.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030716/TIMSONRISK16/TPHealth/

I have worked in public libraries, law libraries, and medical libraries, and have been expected to do some of the most unrelated
work imaginable.

The government heads of public libraries and their administrators are major buttholes who are always trying to force staff into doing such unrelated work as playing detective at the public restroom to find the odd coprophile who is smearing his own excreta all over the bathroom doors and walls.

Doctors for the most part(pardon my own aquaintances in this profession, but even you can be jerks for the most part)Have god complexes and can be arrogant beyond belief. I have been turned into a phlebotomist on occasion because the Doctor/Admninistrator did not ant to pay extra for trained phlebotomists to keep costs down.
Most are too stubborn and will never admit they are wrong even when presented with incomtrovertable proof to the contrary of their beleifs

The people I like he most out of the group, oddly enough, are the ones most insulted and reviled, the lawyers. For the most part, older and seasoned law firm partners are most respectful, courteous and polite, and give other professionals their due, and treat even the lowest young college student working as a file clerk politely. The younger associates can get a little edgy when a real important case is on the line, and snap a bit at you, but they are in general, very generous when it comes to bonuses every year. The firm I worked for paid for every annual professinal membership for library organizations, when ever I had to travel to do research for them, flew me in style, put me in the best hotels, let me eat in style, and gave ME an expense account to pay to wine and dine publishers representatives, when it is usually the rep, wining an dining the librarians to get a sale.

Anyway, the article is another indication of how workers get screwed.