What Have We Learned?

At a staff information session held a week ago, human resources officials faced the full staff of the State Library. On our side, we pretty much had three simple questions:

1. Will my position be funded in the new fiscal year?

2. Will I be the person filling that position (or will someone else bump me out of it)?

3. When will I know the answers to the first two questions.

The answers were shorter than the questions: don't know, don't know, and don't know.

It took longer for them to tell us that, though. For the first question, we're told that our administration needs to determine 'what the State Library will look like' in the new fiscal year. [we're guessing something on the order of 'like a ghost town' ... and we hope we're just being cynical and not realistic] The answer to the second depends on the first to some extent. [although clear, updated seniority lists should be made easily available to all staffers; can't these be posted on the Inside PDE web site?] And the answer to the third question was really 'not for three weeks at the very least'.

There was lots of good will coming our way from the human resources people. They even made it sound like everyone who was going to be furloughed from the State Library by the governor would get placed somewhere else in state government after the civil service people review our resumes and translate our job experience into something else.

Lots of good will, as we said. Just not any real answers.