Librarians Learn Job Security Is a Fairy Tale

She managed to escape the latest round of layoffs, but Ventura County Librarian Martha Gifford suffers from “survivor’s guilt.”

“The ones that are left behind feel as bad as the ones that are going,” said Gifford, 56. “It’s the you-may-be-the-next-one-to-get-the-ax feeling.”

Last week, seven employees of the county’s financially troubled Library Services Agency got the ax. They are the latest in a long list of casualties within the 15-branch library system, which has seen its staff shrink from 133 to 59 in the past four years.

Laurie Dunning, a colleague of Gifford who also works out of E. P. Foster Library in Ventura, was one of those who received a layoff notice. But Dunning was also given a choice: lose her job as a reference specialist or use her seniority to bump a co-worker out of a lower-level position.

“Depending on what I do, other people may be displaced,” she said. “That only adds to the stress, especially when you know the people and you know their situation and here you come along and out they go. It’s not a nice thing to live with.”

Dunning, 44, hasn’t made up her mind what she will do. But it is clear that she and her fellow workers have grown weary of the library agency’s annual budget battles and the uncertainty of their jobs.

“You get to the point where you need both professionally and personally to go somewhere where you are appreciated,” Dunning said.

Indeed, some library employees have left voluntarily over the years, seeking jobs that can provide them with some level of security.

Workers said Richard Maynard, former director of Ventura’s Foster and Wright libraries, resigned in April to take a similar job at Atascadero State Hospital, in part because of his frustrations with the county system. Unlike counties, state hospitals and prisons are mandated by law to provide library services.

Reached at Atascadero, Maynard denied the county’s problems are what drove him to change jobs. He declined to say why he left.

The county’s library agency has been fighting for its survival since 1993, when the state, looking to solve its own fiscal problems, stepped forward and chopped the agency’s annual $10-million budget in half.

Since then, county supervisors have bailed out the agency with a yearly subsidy that has kept the doors open and the lights on at each library branch--and not much else. Layoffs have persisted, library hours scaled back and book budgets slashed from $947,000 to a mere $62,000.

This year, things have gotten even tighter.

At the urging of board Chairman Frank Schillo, supervisors agreed only to pitch in $106,000 to keep adult literacy programs and five small libraries operating until Sept. 30. That’s when the board expects to review results of a library reorganization study.

But Schillo said he doesn’t feel responsible for the layoffs that have been announced since the board adopted its budget. He said the decision to let people go, rather than make cuts in other areas, was made by library administrators.

“My job is not to keep everybody employed,” he said. “My job is to keep libraries open.”

Another reason Schillo and his colleagues decided to provide the libraries with only temporary assistance is because of concerns that they might otherwise discourage support for an advisory vote on a library tax in the November general election.

A county-commissioned telephone survey released last week showed that 56% of the 801 people interviewed would support a parcel tax to raise roughly $4.5 million annually for the library agency.

But even if a library assessment is approved, it would be a year before the money could be collected. And library workers worry about how they would survive in the meantime.

“It doesn’t help morale to be uncertain,” Gifford said. “It doesn’t help anybody to live month to month.”

Three years ago, Gifford said, she received her layoff notice, only to be told two hours before she was to be out the door that a part-time position had opened.

Since then, the Ventura resident says, she has been transferred three times and worked in five libraries--from Fillmore to Simi Valley--at different jobs and pay levels to stay employed.

Meanwhile, some library workers are taking extra steps to protect their futures.

Lori Karns, manager of library acquisitions, said as a precaution she is working on getting her teaching credential. A mother of three, Karns said her husband recently lost his job as an X-ray technician at a local hospital, forcing the family to rely on her for support.

As it is, Karns said she lost half of her four-member staff last week because of cutbacks. She said her crew has fallen so far behind in processing books that they have to turn down donations.

Although she tries to keep a positive outlook, Karns, 47, said the library crisis has taught her some hard lessons.

“When I was little, my dad used to say that your hard work and loyalty were your contract with your employer,” she said. “And your employer’s contract with you was security and benefits.

“But it’s no longer that way. You can work as hard as you can here, and there’s still no security.”