Charles County Public Library’s first union and library management declared an impasse this month after 14 months and 28 bargaining sessions, capping a year marked by roughly $250,000 in public spending on a management-side labor law firm and the resignation of more than half the library’s board.
The union representing 57 full-time and part-time CCPL employees, affiliated with MCGEO Local 1994, was certified in March 2025. A separate unit covering supervisors is still organizing. Both sides declared impasse on July 15 and had until noon two days later to submit best and final offers. The library notified staff the next day that negotiations, previously confidential, were now over.
According to the library’s own July 16 offer, economic terms of any eventual contract would take effect only in the payroll period after the library board formally approves and ratifies an agreement — whichever comes later. The union’s bargaining chair, Christopher Lindstrom, said that means the roughly 57 workers covered by the contract, including some who never joined the union, could go months without raises the library board had already approved, and without any backpay to cover the gap.
The dispute unfolds against a backdrop of board turnover and public spending scrutiny. In June 2025, the library board approved a $250,000 allocation to Jackson Lewis, a law firm known for representing employers in labor disputes, funded largely from the library’s reserve fund, at the request of Executive Director Kennethwayne Thompson. The library’s budget documents describe that spending differently in different years — as a “Collective Bargaining” line item in one budget cycle and folded into “contracted services” in the next, according to the union, which says the relabeling obscures the scale of the spending.
The library’s seven-member board has lost four members, including its president, to resignations since public criticism of the union-related spending began; three members remain. More than 1,200 letters have been sent to the board urging it to hold library administration accountable, Lindstrom said.
Thompson, the Executive Director, has been on medical leave since mid-December 2025 and has made only occasional appearances since, according to the union, though he has continued to travel for professional conferences. A comparison of the library’s fiscal year 2026 and fiscal year 2027 salary schedules shows the maximum salary for the Executive Director position rose by $30,249 over that period — from $182,051 to $212,300 — a figure that matches what the union says it has calculated independently.
Concerns about workplace culture under Thompson’s leadership have also surfaced publicly. At a November 2025 board meeting, Lindstrom told the board: “One of the more harrowing aspects of organizing is the number of stories that I’ve been told by coworkers about instances of discrimination, bullying, and hostile practices they’ve endured by library leadership. I hope you will sit down with me in good faith to discuss this.” He said he did not disclose specifics, including to the library’s own human resources department, because he did not consider the library capable of neutrally investigating its own leadership; the library later retained an outside investigator, but Lindstrom declined to formally participate after the investigator told him the union would not receive the findings.
Bargaining over the union’s first contract has also touched on the library’s dress code, bereavement leave, a proposed points-based attendance policy, and language governing how the library could discuss any future layoffs — issues both sides say remain unresolved heading into mediation.
