Thursday, November 6, 2008

Sucky day

So remember back when I talked about how B's library was trying to save money by cancelling Saturday hours, and they were, then they weren't, then they were, then the mayor declared they weren't?

Well, we didn't know how good we had it then. The mayor announced a number of cost-cutting measures today which included closing 11 library branches, which will result in layoffs of 110 people.

B's library isn't closing. But it's not as simple as the people whose branches are closing losing their jobs. Layoffs are determined by seniority, so it's the most recent hires that are going first.

Now there are people who were hired after B, and 40 of the positions will be eliminated by attrition from people who were leaving anyway. Hopefully, the fact that he's at supervisor level will help give him another layer of seniority. However, there's also a possibility that if there are too many other supervisors with more seniority than him, he'll lose his position and be kicked back down to regular librarian. Fortunately, if this happens, it will happen in January when he's due to step up a grade in pay, so we would only be losing $200 a month in income instead of $400. Only.

Even if he's not affected, this bodes very ill for contract negotiations next June.

We don't know how this will shake out yet, but it certainly is definite that B's resume is going out tout suite. If he does get laid off, at least I have a stable income this time from a job I can do from anywhere. And my mother hasn't sold her house yet, so I could probably convince her to let us rent it from her. But argh. This is spectacularly bad timing. We've been wanting to move back to the Midwest, but not like this.

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