Covid Support Thread
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Yeah… I think you would have to legally change residency. It’s worth a look into, Lisforleslie. But I think you are probably right.
@Ange, how are you doing? Is being made redundant and required to apply for your position a normal practice in Australia? I’ve always worked for governmental entities in the US so our process is different and I have NO idea regarding US private business practices. It does seem in the US you are just let go or laid off if there is restructuring.
@Bethany, in the US if there’s a restructuring or you get laid off from a big company, they will typically tell you you can apply for positions elsewhere in the company, like other departments that weren’t affected. It doesn’t make sense to me though that if your position is made redundant, or your department got re-orged, that you’d be asked to reapply for your job, because the whole point is it doesn’t exist anymore.
At the company I work at, a couple years ago (before I got here), they restructured the whole company to an “agile” model, and I think people did have to re-apply for their own jobs, or apply for other jobs. But this wasn’t a lay-off in response to economic conditions.
When I was laid off about 10 years ago and they were giving a ridiculously generous severance package. We got 2-3 weeks pay for each year of service. Some had been with the company for decades. They also gave a year of medical insurance at your company rate (it was a fantastic package, less than $100 month for gold standard coverage).
There was an option of applying for other jobs in the organization. If you applied, were selected and then chose not to take the job then you gave up your entire severance package. I don’t know many who even considered it.
Thanks Kate. The limited experience I have with the private sector is more or less contract workers (like at GM & Dow) and factory line workers so those positions can always be a little more precarious even in the best of financial times.
@Bethany, contractors can also be more secure. I’ve been contracting for a year at an investment company that doesn’t have any time limit on how long they can use contractors. My boss has brought up a full time position, but it would be less money than I make contracting, and I feel I might be more vulnerable to layoffs if I were FT, while they could keep leveraging contract help. My contract got extended through the end of 2021 and I feel pretty secure.
@Leslie, when I got laid off a few years ago, I got 9 months severance and then some more on top of that for bitching about being old. And healthcare. They’re laying people off from there again now and I think they changed the guidelines so the people don’t get that much.
I used to work in the city’s public library system, specifically in their Youth Services department. This year was horrible pre-covid with payroll issues and not being given even minimal necessary supplies, but then as soon things began shutting down, everyone in my entire department was laid off without so much as a ” we regret to inform you” letter in the mail. I always felt that, despite it all, I was making a real difference in the world in my own small way. I had nothing but stellar reviews from administrators and patrons. It hurt. I’ve been told my whole working life that working in a library is more of a ” luxury/ nonessential/ hobby career”. I never even got to say goodbye to the kids I had worked with -some of them I had known for years. They( the kids) used to refer to me as ” auntie” and the proudest moment of my life was hearing a little boy with a diagnosed LD and was always bouncing around foster homes, who-before I started helping him was literally afraid of books. He was afraid of books as tangible objects, literally. After months and months of work-probably over a year easily, I and my team finally got to hear him read through ‘ Green Eggs and Ham’ almost entirely on his own. People who don’t know me well or who worked with me directly never saw that side of what I did , those singular moments of triumph and I never felt like I had to justify my position as something of merit to peoople who questioned me on it. I really, really believed that what I did was worthwhile and maybe someday the right people would see that too and my colleagues and I would no longer be viewed as some sort of novelty.
After I was let go from my city job I was thankful to still have my second job as librarian in a non-profit setting. I built the library and literacy center from the ground up, literally. Shelves and cataloging and all.
The libraries in my city still haven’t reopened. More than half the Children’s and Youth Librarians and Literacy workers have been laid off.
New “financial advisors” have gained a foothold at my non-profit job. I just found out from another department head, because the director couldn’t muster up the courage to tell me to my face , that I and the entire developmental program staff will be having our hours cut drastically after the 7th. It’s not necessarily even a money thing( they just hired new staff and renovations) it’s that these new people convinced the former directors that I and my similar collegues were just ” icing on the cake” and that were are the people to cut in order to save money.
They’re cutting our hours and making us haul around furniture ( not in our job descriptions) to try and ” push us out of the nest” so to speak. I worked primarily with the children who were struggling the most with reading. I advised their parents on the best action plans, I read stories aloud and checked in and out materials. The kids I worked with were all struggling- be it from physical or mental barriers, or even that English was not their first language.
I gave my blood to that little library and the programs I ran from it. I was seldom reinbursed for the books I contributed into our circulation system, the framed Children’s Book illustration posters I hung up on the previously barren walls, the puppets. Jeez, what am I going to do with all these storytime puppets and sets now? I really thought what I did was somehow recognized in its value. What I thought was value
. I was just so happy to do what I was doing. Yes, management was never perfect and I had my own frustrations, but at the end of the day I was happy to get the chance to share something I loved so much to those I thought needed it the most. I even found a way for our school to get audio book players and downloaded cassette books for our few visually impaired children. I wanted them to feel included. There was no brail book section until I came along.
I had a lot of difficulties as a kid with my own dsylexia, visual impairments and general fear of of failing when it came to reading. I wanted to help the struggling kids because I remembered so well what it felt like to be in their shoes.
Now these people who have no idea about who I am and what I have done have deemed me as being some sort of frivolous, unnecessary exspense. For weeks they have been making me send detailed accounts describing my ” role” at the center and the ” essential duties” I fulfilled in my role. It’s been humiliating. I was one of the lowest paid staff members. They’re going to dismantle the library-shelves and books and art-all of it, as soon as the 8th. They may keep some parts of it up after I am gone because” it’s a nice display piece”( their words)
I got an email on my work account a few hours ago, it was sent to all staff, about how the waiting list for Pod VL groups was ” a mile long”.
I’m sorry to rant. I’m just feeling so overwhelmed. It is one thing to lose a job due to budget cuts, but it is another to hear and be made to feel like you were nothing more than ” icing on the cake” to begin with. I wish that they would atleast te me in person or over an actual ema instead of sending word through one of my colleagues who is also being ” pushed “.I’m sorry to rant. I’m sorry for any and all spelling/ grammatical errors. I’m just feeling sort of worthless and hopeless. The one thing I really enjoyed doing isn’t “essential” enough to warrant any investment in it. I know everything is changing due to Covid and that I am far from the only one losing a job I loved-if not atleast liked, because of it. It just makes me feel ashamed to have to tell my mother that I really am unessential. She already questions me all the time as to why I won’t become a phlebotomist like some of my siblings. I feel so totally worthless and nonessential. I’ll move on any way I can, but I am feeling a little bitter. I’m trying to avoid social media these last few days, maybe you can help imagine why. There is no real point to me venting this all out there. Sorry. I don’t like to use other people as emotional targets for my frustrations and feelings.
@Bethany The job I was doing will no longer exist so yeah it has to be made redundant. I’m generally positive I’ll get one of the new ones and I hope I do as it’s more money. If I’m unsuccessful I’ll then be given a redundancy package (which people could opt for anyway if they didn’t want one of the new jobs). The new jobs have enough difference in the PD that they can be classed as a separate one.
Australia generally has pretty good worker protections for full time, they can’t just sack you because they feel like it or they’re out of cash. I’ve had a few companies run out of money so they’ve got rid of entire departments but that always comes with a redundancy package. I’m sure there are dodgy operators out there that don’t follow the rules but that’s how it’s supposed to work.
@OUN, that’s terrible. It sums up so much of the Trump administration too – cutting programs for the poor and people with disabilities, gutting institutions, taking jobs away.
Losing a job always fucks with your self-worth under the best of circumstances. It’s really traumatic. But don’t listen to your family who are talking shit about libraries. They’re wrong. Libraries are incredibly important. Also my mom has a library science degree and had a very successful corporate career in information science stuff.
To be able to make that difference in kids lives, there’s always a need for tutoring, even now, it can be done virtually. My parents are signing up to do it this fall (used to be in person at the housing project, now I think it’s zoom).
This is a terribly hard time, and to lose a job is an emotional roller coaster in itself. Hang on, look for work, and see if there’s something you can do on a volunteer basis to use your wonderful ability to help kids.
The thing is, they’re hiring new staff now. None of the new hires have completed their degrees and their all relatively young, in their late teens to early 20s. They know they can pay them next to nothing too. It’s not right or fair for them, it just sucks that I am getting all these ‘ congratulations to our new staff’ emails. One of these emails even said how progressive our organization is for hiring and “empowering” these young girls.
They had all of us outside for a few weeks in the hot sun in the parking lot with no shade, stripping and sanding all the furniture. Normally they have professionals do this. They didn’t provide any PPE or proper tools. They had me trying to strip paint off of these metal cabinets and I got some kind of chemicals on my knees and it began to burn my skin. I ran to the back door to try and rush to a sink, but they had locked the back door because they didn’t want us violating new Covid distancing rules. I ran to the front of the building but I had to wait over 15 minutes for them to send someone down to open it because they let the doorman go. By the time I got to a working sink to try and wash the chemicals off my knees, the skin around my knee caps had started to turn a crispy fried brown. A week later and my knees are still tender and burnt looking. I told the adminstration staff I wouldn’t be doing anymore of that until they gave us proper safety tools. They hired the two other young girls who were outside with me and commended them on their “total dedication to the school”.
I feel like a lot of people who work in the head office that always said we were all a family probably knew what was going to happen to me.
Our director and the financial advisor are not the nicest people. When I mentioned at an office party that I spent time teaching and working in the middle east, our director asked me why I didn’t choose to teach somewhere ‘with civilized people’. She doesn’t read or have a spark of creative blood in her body. When a tour group came to see our building she came to the library and one of the people began talking to me about Children’s books and illustrators. The director got angry that she was being excluded from our conversation ( she wasn’t) and pointed to an old stack of encyclopedias and claimed encyclopedias were her favorite books. The library was never anything more to her than a place to show off to visitors.
My father is an artist and his father was a starving writer, so he understands what I am going through. My mother not so much. I’m just shattered over this. The only thing I have been good at and enjoyed doing is always the first to go. I’m not even worth a real face-to-fsce goodbye or email.It sounds like a (literally) toxic workplace where you were seriously undervalued. Get your resume together, dust yourself off and start looking for something better.
Sounds like this is a pet project for a few folks, not a well run organization dedicated to making the world a better place.
