Director of Operations Management and Training Terry Bickham said LC is preparing a workforce transformation initiative to help current employees upgrade their abilities while attracting new staff with digital-era skills. Early phases of the program will focus on professional-development opportunities for existing staff; the new hires will occur after the library has revamped its services, so that the new librarians’ skills don’t exceed the services they currently provide.
Bickham and Human Resources Director Dennis Hanratty said that recruiting new librarians should pose no problems since jobs at LC are viewed as “prestigious” and “well paying.”
Meanwhile, The Hill reported August 16 that 12 of the 59 support staff members in LC’s Congressional Research Service whose jobs were eliminated last year still do not have new positions as their September 30 termination approaches.
Although many of the laid-off workers took early retirement or moved elsewhere in CRS, a dozen chose to remain in hopes a position within the agency would open up, allowing them to retain their seniority and pay rate.
The Hill noted that the employees’ union has criticized CRS Director Daniel Mulhollan’s termination of the staffers, more than two-thirds of whom are women or minorities. At a July 27 oversight hearing held by the House Administration Committee, Congressional Research Employee Association President Dennis Roth charged that “CRS currently practices a [leadership] style inappropriate, damaging, and destructive for a professional service organization.”
In July, a Federal Labor Relations Authority arbitrator ruled in favor of a grievance filed by CREA after the layoffs were announced, charging that CRS had violated the union’s collective-bargaining agreement by not initially issuing a “reduction in force” that would have given employees greater rights. LC filed an appeal disputing the ruling August 7.
Posted August 18, 2006.