We know that too many of our members have been furloughed, with some jobs being eliminated entirely. This is bad news for the individuals, for their colleagues, and very bad news for students and other community members who are missing out on the opportunity to experience a good library.

We are sharing an excerpt from this article from American Libraries Magazine, looking at some of the things lost in a furlough.

“One of the biggest challenges—the effect on morale—is heightened when furloughs arrive with little warning, little support, or both.

“Communication has been terrible. We are actually finding out more from the news than from our own admins,” says Cara*, an assistant at a branch library in Tennessee who was furloughed the week of March 20 along with almost all of her colleagues across her library system.

While Cara’s direct supervisor is checking in with her regularly during the furlough, she says, senior system administrators are not in contact with individual branches: “We’ve just had no support. No kind emails saying, ‘We’ll get through this.’ No checking in. My supervisor has no idea what’s going on either. I don’t like turning to the gossip mill for information.”

Cara adds that she wished her library’s board had considered the furloughs with more compassion and empathy. “I’m not saying that I needed someone to hold my hand or anything like that, but an attempt at some humanity would have helped,” she says. “Just to feel like we’re all in this together would have been nice. But we aren’t.”

Before the mid-March meeting in which Jorge*, a library director in northwest Chicago, was furloughed, his library board hadn’t mentioned the possibility to him, he says.

“It came out of nowhere,” he says. “The meeting started, my assistant and I were told to leave the room, and when we came back, we were told [my staff and I] were furloughed. I was thrown under the bus.” Jorge’s assistant, the only employee kept on payroll, was tasked with calling staff to relay the additional layoffs.

Fortunately, Jorge was able to retain his existing part-time position at a different library as well as successfully apply for unemployment benefits during the furlough. His furlough concluded at the end of May, but his challenges didn’t: He was given one week, he says, to reopen for curbside service. He says he eventually convinced the board to bring back all staff members to assist in reopening efforts. “Honestly, I can’t run a library without a staff,” he says.”

You can read the rest of this article here.

Furloughs are not uncommon in different libraries and in hard economic situations; but handling them well is so important.