Colleen Lochner had been working at Syracuse University’s E.S. Bird Library for 19 years when she heard about a new position in the Learning Commons department. It meant better pay and a change of pace, so she applied.

Lochner was informed Dec. 18 that she’d been hired and would move up to a Library Technician 3 position. Less than a month later, she was out of a job.

‘I had a choice of taking a custodial position or taking the severance package,’ she said, ‘But physically, I’m not able to operate those big machines and stuff. I had worked there 19 years and four months. And then I was gone.’

Lochner is one of 23 SU library staff members laid off Jan. 7. Forty-eight university employees were laid off in response to SU’s current financial situation and a subsequent need for administrative cutting, according to an e-mail Chancellor Nancy Cantor sent to SU employees.

The layoffs are the largest since downsizing in the early 1990s, when no library staff members were affected. The situation mirrors a national economic meltdown with a rising 7.2 percent unemployment rate and thousands of job cuts reported every day.

Of the 23 people cut, some had worked at the library for more than 30 years, and others had just started. Some were able to bump down to lower positions because of their union contracts, and others were left with no alternatives.

Chancellor Nancy Cantor notified departments in October about the financial situation and the need for administrative cost cutting, said Dale King, interim director of organization services. He and library administration were approached and asked to cut between 10 and 15 percent. The library went from a staff of 190 to 167 after the layoffs.

The cut is high compared to other departments, like housing and custodial, where no workers were displaced. Suzanne Thorin, dean of libraries, said the high number of cuts, all at the same time, was an intentional move.

‘Over the next two years, all of these administrative units were asked to make a 10 percent cut, and we did ours at once, which is why (the numbers) look a little lopsided,’ Thorin said. ‘We believe that one disruption was better than two. I didn’t want people sitting around thinking, ‘Oh there’s going to be more.”

Thorin also said the library was ‘staff-heavy’ before the layoffs. She and King said decisions were made in an attempt to not affect library services.

But some staff and students are concerned about the library’s ability to adjust.

Alane Johnson is still adjusting. She’s adjusting to having to work the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, to no longer being able to take classes, and to working a job she’d already had and moved on from years ago. Johnson is one of a number of employees who were bumped out of their position and into a lower level job.

The library union has a bumping system through which union members whose jobs are targeted for layoff can bump someone in a lower level position out and take their job. There are four tiers of library technicians (LT). Each technician is designated a bargaining rank depending on their seniority within the tier.

King said the system is in place to protect long-time employees.

But sometimes even the most senior members fall victim to it, said Johnson, who had been working at the library for 22 years, only to get bumped out of her job into an LT2 position.

‘I still don’t understand, to this day, how my seniority didn’t mean anything, how they didn’t take that into account,’ she said.

Johnson had recently taken a job as an LT4, making her the person with least seniority in the LT4 category – but still a 22-year veteran of the library. Since bumping goes by seniority within a given tier, and not on the whole, Johnson was given the option of a severance package or bumping two tiers down into an LT2 position.

She bumped down, bumping someone else out of a job.

‘We had no idea who we might bump. We knew it was gonna be someone we see every day,’ she said, ‘but we didn’t know who.’

Johnson said the whole experience came as a shock, and that she was surprised at the university’s ‘insensitive’ handling of it.

‘Nobody had a clue. This was the best-kept secret of the university, even supervisors were crying, administrators didn’t even tell them until that day,’ she said.

Johnson said the dean met with those who were being laid off, took about 10 of them who didn’t have any bumping rights, brought them into an office one by one, and told them they had to let them go.

‘Then they started on us,’ Johnson said, ‘letting us know what our options were. We had the option to bump, or the option to take the severance package and just leave. It was difficult. If you wanted to do something different, you didn’t have time to think. You’re in shock for those 48 hours. How are you going to make a decision in 48 hours?’

Johnson said by the time she went back upstairs after the meeting, her computer was shut down. Unable to access anything in their computers, they were told to pack up their things that day.

‘They wanted us out of the building as soon as possible,’ Johnson said. ‘They didn’t want us to stay around. At that moment, it felt really cold, and we were in shock. These are people that said they valued us, and some people had been here for 30 years, me 22.’

Thorin said that, despite what seemed to be an abrupt firing, typical procedure in most companies is to inform employees the morning they’re to be laid off.

‘You can really stir up a workplace, or work can stop if you say, ‘In two weeks you have to go,” she said. Everyone who was laid off gets paid for a week after they leave.

But Johnson said the library still felt the negative effects of the layoffs.

‘It was really cold, and you got supervisors not looking at you, librarians turning the other way,’ Johnson said. ‘Morale is really low in this place.’

And while Johnson and Dismuke try to adjust to a much smaller workforce and changing job descriptions, Colleen Lochner will try to find a new job.

‘I never really thought that the university would do something like this to so many people who were dedicated to the mission of the university,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t just the job, it was like the whole community.’

Lochner, whose son and husband are both SU alumni, said she doubts she’ll be able to find any openings in libraries, because of the nature of the profession and the market right now.

‘It was such a good experience, I really liked the job,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I ever would have left if I hadn’t been forced to.’

Lochner also said human resources has been helpful in her hunt for a new job.

Neil Strodel, associate vice president of human resources, said HR made sure that each person who was laid off had one of SU’s six career counselors provide job training and help them develop their resumes in order to find new jobs.

Still, Lochner said that even with her severance package and unemployment benefits, her financial situation is troubling.

‘It’s still hard to have your income pulled out from under you when you have things to pay for.’

She and her husband are selling one of their cars to bring in some extra money.

‘(SU) is a place we felt comfortable being, but I don’t feel comfortable being there anymore,’ Lochner said. ‘I will go see the people who are still there. I don’t have anything against them, or the person who took my job. They’re victims of this same system.’

With people like Lochner gone, staff members have more responsibility, and some say services are suffering.

Vanessa Dismuke is the chief union steward for the library union and has worked at Bird Library for 28 years as a Library technician 4.

Dismuke said she wonders if there may have been alternatives to such large-scale downsizing, as she sees it damaging to the productivity of the library.

‘The ultimate concern is that it’s going to affect services for students and faculty,’ she said. ‘You’re shifting staff all around, so there are issues. There was an issue with reserve people getting reserve materials. With less people, things aren’t being returned to the shelves quickly. There was a process when certain things came in, someone would notify the faculty – that may not be done as quickly now.’

Kelsey Kobic, a senior history major, said that after experiencing problems the first two weeks of school, she met with Thorin to voice concerns about the state of the library.

‘I was unhappy with a lot of things at the library. A bunch of reserves weren’t ready for the first week of classes or the second week of classes. I wanted to know why they were laying people off but at the same time doing construction.’ Kobic said since the first two weeks of school, things have been slow-moving, but somewhat easier to get what she needs.

Dismuke echoed Kobic’s frustration about the construction.

‘I think it’s an issue when we see different types of improvements or renovations going on and people ask questions – were these necessary?’ Dismuke said. ‘Or could we not have them because they save jobs?’

The money from layoff salary cuts does not go toward renovations but SU administration, Thorin said.

Dismuke said that in addition to services, the remaining staff members are struggling to adjust.

‘In some ways this is still a period of mourning for a lot of staff, because it feels like there is something missing, and there is,’ Dismuke said. ‘I think it was very damaging to an already weakened morale.’

jmterrus@syr.edu

Published on February 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm