Librarians in Greater Victoria plan to escalate job action on Wednesday in their efforts to negotiate a pay equity deal that would match their wages with other Victoria-area civic workers.

The chair of the Greater Victoria regional library board, Christopher Graham, said the job action will have an effect, but the libraries will remain open and try to adjust.

More than 200 members of CUPE Local 410 have been in a legal strike position for more than a month.

They have already staged three walkouts, said Olivia Anderson, a branch manager in Saanich, and now they plan to cut programs as part of their work-to-rule strategy.

"We'll be cancelling all of the drop-in baby times, all of the family story times," said Anderson on Tuesday.

"In terms of adult programs, there's a broad range of programs that are instructed by librarians, so user education for seniors will all be cancelled, as well as author talks, book talks. Those will all be cancelled," she said.
 
Anderson said librarians feel terrible about cancelling the services, but they also felt they had no choice.

The issue of pay equity is also one of the key issues in the 12-week-old strike by library workers in Vancouver. There, library workers, who are mostly female, say they are underpaid for their jobs compared with pay scales in positions held mostly by males.