In the big scheme of city gov't, the cookbook librarian is pretty small potatoes. LA is way too broke to keep all these niche jobs open.

Layoffs are difficult.

The problem with merit layoffs is there is not one uniform, perfect evaluator, and they open an entity up to discrimination and favoritism lawsuits, and seniority layoffs protect from this.

The problem with seniority layoffs is that performance doesn't earn someone much protection, and the longer someone is there the more they make, which leads to layoffs often retaining those who make more and get less done. (i.e., instead of laying off two higher earning mediocre performers, you may end up laying off three medium pay high performers... so you not only lay off more people, the ones left lesser in count and throughput.)

Of course, there is always the double cross too. My wife was victim of this. She had been in her division the longest and was rated highly by clients. When she returned from maternity leave for our twins, the business was hurting financially, she asked "would it help if I cut back my hours for a while? I could spend more time with my twins and save you some money, a win win." They accepted and thanked her, and then layed her off because "she was part time and the logical cut." Here's the real kicker--they didn't want to lose her work, so they hired her back under contract. So, their savings are not in her salary, they just no longer have to fund the pension of the longest-serving editor (she's still only 34), they no longer have to pay the cancer surviving mother of twins medical leave if she gets sick and they are saving on her life insurance premiums. The real kicker is, the intern they hired to help when she was on maternity leave just moved into a full time position. He's cheaper than her with no medical problems. They are lucky I can't prove this, but I've been auditing dirtbags for 12 years and I know how things really work.

Ethics aside, its is quite dumb for a business to absolutely cheat someone like this and then leave them on their system to work--it's a security risk, that is for sure.

Ayways, I'm done. Layoffs are something I've audited and seen, and they are hell.

Here's the real kicker--they didn't want to lose her work, so they hired her back under contract.

Not only does it get the company out of the benefits game, it makes the contractor a business expense and therefore is tax deductible.

Why do you think temp services have thrived over the past bunch of years? If they are doing good they keep the temps. If the company is sucking along, they can jettison them with no real harm.

@Jim P: "ot only does it get the company out of the benefits game, it makes the contractor a business expense and therefore is tax deductible."
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I'm not a tax or finance auditor (i'm a security and ethics auditor), so I wasn't are of this. Thank you.

The company is paying a huge price in the trust and morale of the staff. They are all wondering if they'll soon lose their pension and benefits as well. Kind of tough for them to stomach seeing the pensions and benefits of people making $30,000-$40,000 targeted by a CEO making $250,000, and his four vice presidents making about $150,000--in a company of fewer than 50.

I've seen this kind of thing before in my work. An entire production location will be shut down and staff let go by a handful of people making twice what the location cost, and then they get hit later by not being able to produce their product. I don't care how smart and capable a manager is (and make no mistake, good managers are needed), they need people actually producing their product.

LAPL is a cess-pool of incompetence, even for LA. Check out this guy's experience:

http://www.joelrane.com/lapl.html

Seniority-based layoffs suck. The time you have been working at a job is largely irrelevant to how useful you are as an employee.

"Not only does it get the company out of the benefits game, it makes the contractor a business expense and therefore is tax deductible"

The same expenses are equally deductible when attributable to employees.

The person writing the post, just had cookbooks as one of her areas of responsibility. She worked in several other areas of the library.

Your views are probably based on the common belief that management types can identify their most and least productive workers, right?

Studies done over the years, as reported in management magazines, indicate management folks are as likely to rate their least productive workers as being their most productive workers, as the least productive. (If someone wants a cite, go find it. This is a learning opportunity for you. As I have stated in the past, it is not my job to educate people on everything I learned and observed and read over 40 years. The least productive people are those who need everything handed to them on a platter.)

Two groups of people tend to be rated much higher in productivity on merit evaluations than they really are.

First, the ***-kissers and bull-shitters.

Second, those with large amounts of APPARENT WORK EFFORT. People who look very busy tend to be rated as much more productive then they are. Truly efficient people don't always look that busy, because they make it look easy and go home on time.

I don't always tell my own experiences, but this one is too good not to share.

In the 70's, I was the first technician on the first microprocessor based navigation box, perhaps in the world, but I am not sure of that, just never heard of another, and we were in the loop if one existed.

I was terrible on some sorts of electronics, but turned out to have a knack for embedded microprocessor systems, and thus became quite good on that box.

Our work structure in that particular department was unusual in that once one finished his work, there was no other work to do. Sounds strange, but such things do happen. In other departments, there was an unlimited amount of shit work, but for us, it was wander around or read a book once you had your work done.

After 4 years, I obtained a much higher paid job in another department. A few weeks later, a man from that department came over laughing to tell my that my former boss had said, "I am sure glad to get rid of that lazy Irlandes who only worked an hour or two a day, and get in two hard working technicians, who are working 12 hours a day, seven days a week."

I said, "Of course, he is joking."

He said, "Nope, we thought so at first, but we finally realized he is deadly serious."

He clearly meant it as an insult, but it was actually the greatest compliment I received in my 31 years there.

I found out later they weren't even fixing problems, just identifying the module and scrapping it, which was very expensive in our small scale production runs.

Anyway, this proved inability to tell most productive from least productive employees is the reason most unions demand a seniority system.

Actually, things will change depending upon the level of skill involved in an organization. When I studied those issues, there were considered to be three levels of skills, though one could break it down farther, I suppose.

The lowest level was simple, repetitive skills with wide tolerances of the end work. This sort of work can be done by most people at modest pay levels and with a few minutes of training. In the early 20th Century factory work was so simple that when MEN got hurt on the job, the boss trotted out to the front gate and took the first man waiting there as replacement. (For once here's a cite for the lazy; MIDDLETOWN, by the Lynds.)

The mid level of tolerance required people with some medium level of skills, with a bit more pay to get the people needed. More training needed, and in today's environment, there may be a nonsensical education requirement, such as any college degree.

The high level of tolerance requires highly skilled people and one must pay more money yet to get those who can do it. Prerequisites may include specialized training or education at their own expense before hire. There may be a very long training on the job requirement.

Obviously, these different levels of skill will involve different organizational dynamics. Our high tech factory actually had jobs across the three levels of skill. At the level where I worked, we did not consider a new tech experienced until after five years on the job. Not only couldn't you walk out to the gate and get a new employee, but they had to go national when they needed a new tech, just like for the engineering staff.

When one says the new employees are the most productive, that brings to question just how high a skill level is involved. Of course, maybe in government employment, it doesn't get very high, since there is no bottom line as in private business. Interesting.

My wife's former supervisor had 6 people under him. There was a decent amount of my turnover. There was a very simple formula for them to determine who would get the promotion to his assistant when the position was vacant, who would get the best story assignments, who would be assigned to cover the worst events (i.e, get stuck with the saturday job instead of one during working hours), who he would side with when there was a conflict, and who got laid off when it came to that. The formula--track how often he does lunch with subordinates. That would tell you who his closest friend of the 2, 3, 6, etc. involved was. The one he would do lunch with most got the promotions and best tasks, those he did it with the least would get the crap jobs and laid off, and those in between would have the luck of the draw depending on who else was involved.

Sound unethical? That's not his explanation.

Seniority layoffs, while flawed and problematic, do take the personal bias, discrimination, and workplace politics out of the equation.

It's tough everywhere & it's going to get worse.
After reading about LA, I confirm my attitude about unions;their traditional way of operating is outdated. Please! Professionals in a union?
No wonder we're the most underpaid of all graduate-qualified professions! ALA needs to be more like the ABA for lawyers or AMA for doctors and work with local library associations to develop them into local professional oversight that sets strict standards for performance as well as for libraries hiring them. In addition, there should be a national qualification process for librarians with local certifications required that are unique to librarians(not civil service!)
I think that will reduce the incompetence and result in fewer librarians which will then raise the standards & pay scale. For those that want to manage the circ desk for life, there should be similar standards at a paraprofessional level that SHOULD be protected & overseen by a union. I really think many in librarianship don't want a professional career, they just want a career job. There's nothing wrong with that but the current ease for which one can obtain an MLS, blurs the professional standards and attracts a conflicting mix. Librarianship may be better served by splitting into a two-tier system similar to the teaching levels in Library schools where a doctorate is needed. Other than teaching at the graduate level,doctorates in librarianship seldom helps for securing a job or job security; a better MLS might.
If this current system doesn't change, expect to see large municipal libraries go the way of the dinosaur and only smaller, local specialized libraries thrive in new and more innovative services to increasingly smaller units of communities that will follow on the heels of the trend towards self-sustainability.