Public Employee Press

Buyouts help stop New York Public Library layoffs


For the members of Local 1930, the New York Public Library system hasn’t been a happy place to work this year.

Soon after the release of the proposed budget for fiscal year 2010, layoffs loomed large as NYPL President Paul LeClerc announced that up to 465 members and managers could lose their jobs in the midst of the country’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

With combined city and state budget cuts threatening up to 900 jobs in the city’s three library systems, Local 1930 President Carol Thomas worked on a fight-back campaign with presidents Eileen Muller of Brooklyn Library Guild Local 1482 and Margalit Susser of Queens Borough Library Guild Local 1322. The campaign paid off as budget restorations by the City Council mitigated the need for job and service cuts.

At NYPL, a voluntary buyout providing up to six months of salary combined with the budget restorations to save jobs.

On Aug. 12, Local 1930 held a “Cocktail SIP Party” at the union to honor the 120 “special important people” who participated in the Separation Incentive Program.

Thomas wished the members who took the buyout well in their post-NYPL lives and expressed the local’s gratitude because their decision to retire early or change jobs helped save remaining members. She told PEP that protecting co-workers was a motivating factor for a number of SIP participants.

“Sure, I wanted to save jobs,” said former Supervising Librarian and Local 1930 Secretary Jean Peterson, who retired a year early after nearly 40 years at NYPL.

Peterson plans to be active in the Retirees Association of DC 37 and to get involved in politics in her Manhattan community. Meanwhile, she is enjoying getting up late.

After almost 20 years at the library, Office Aide Haseena Jan said she was also partly motivated to take the buyout to help out her colleagues. She looks forward to traveling with her husband to help her three daughters raise their kids.

“Ultimately, the Library could have taken the low road and simply let some employees go, which unfortunately has been the choice of some cultural institutions,” said DC 37 Research and Negotiations Director Dennis Sullivan.

“As a union, we obviously don’t like downsizing. But we believe the severance program was a prudent step, given the magnitude of the economic crisis we face.”