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mburbank · #1

The New England Aquarium and the Boston Historical Museum have both had VERY large layoffs in the last week. Historically speeaking that does not bode well for my institution.

On the plus side we've gotten some very large grants recently, inculding a three million dollar one.

On the minus side, that grant was for technology education, which I don't have very much to do with.

On the plus side, I'm the only division assistant in RD&P, formerly known as Exhibits, so my job is protcted by the fact that the very people who'd be laying me off would have to do my work after I was gone.

On the minus side, that does nothing to protect most of my friends.

On the plus side, I'm being concidered to write a play for our upcoming Einstein exhibit, something that's already funded. On the plus, plus side, I write for significantly less than my other major competition.

On the minus side, the last time we had layoffs, they cut entire small programs like the one I used to work in, and Science Theatre is one of those small programs.

kellychaos · #2

Eistein's being replaced by that one guy that can think in 13 hyperspace dimensions. It's all in the exihibition literature.

Anonymous · #3

I thought things were supposed to be getting better

mburbank · #4

The economy? Getting better. Slowly.

Job growth? Just about zero.

Economy and job growth in my state? Nonexistant.

As far as cultural institutions in the greater Boston area go, my Museum and the MFA are the most solid, but we're all doing shit attendance. We're in the middle of a strategic campaign to realign ourselves for reaseacrh and technology and engineering education so we're way less reliant of attendance. The question is how far we've gotten with that as opposed to how much of a hit we took.

I honestly don't think my job is in danger at all, but I'd say the chances of my getting an assitant this year just went out the window. That's bad because my administrative load goes up with every grant speciffic researcher we hire, plus I really want to expand into professional developement training. We got lots of smart folks but they don't always know how to play well together in teams, which is a big skill set for me. As recently as a week or so ago they were looking at throwing a lot of that work my way. If we have big layoffs, I doubt we'll be doing any teambuilding stuff. Plus the tension is very thick.

kellychaos · #5

Exactly how does the layoffs work, Max? When the grants dry up for specific programs, does that mean that the people working under that grant are thrown out with the bath water or is there room for parallel movement under a different department/program. How much of it is a "who you blow" thing?

mburbank · #6

None of it, really. Some people are hired for a speciffic grant funded project, and while it increases their chances at picking up another job, when the project is over so is their job, and that's the terms of employment.

Most of us, however, are hired not for a speciffic project, but by the Mueum itself. In the last round of layoffs, the President of the Museum, with the approval of the Board of trustees, went to the VP's and said we need to cut X dollars out of each of your budgets, and I want it to be ion the form of salaries. The VP's then pretty much forced the managers to pick who they were going to lay off. We have a new president now and maybe he won't be so quick to save money in the form of staff. Who knows.

My department, the one I was hired into after I got layed off last time has a lot more lattitude than most. We've always worked on a project by project basis, the way the whole Museum is supposed to be moving now. What thaat means is a lot of our pay doesn't come out of the genral operating budget anyway. It's various grants we've competed for to complete various projects. Functionally this means that as one project ends, an employee's labor costs are picked up by the project he's moving on to. The President can't really save any money by terminating us.

They could trim us by saying you have to cover all your bases with one less designer, one less planner, one less tech designer; and ask our project grants to carry us further, and they may do this. There's only one administrative assistant for all the projects though, and that's me.

The biggest danger, and under our last Pres it deffinitely would have happened, is trending. If the Aquarium lays of, say forty people, then the ice has been broken and we can lay of forty. He was a real bastard, and the fact that the people left were too few to get the job done never concerned him much. I'm hoping the new guy has a little more vision.

I'm guessing this is more than anyone ever wanted to know about Museum politics.

Jixby Phillips · #7

I'VE GOT TO ADMIT ITS GETTING BETTER GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME LOL LIKE THAT SMASH MOTUH SONG

mburbank · #8

Does Smashmouth do the lyric

I used to be cruel to my woman,
I beat her and kept her apart from the things
that she loved
I know it was mean,
but I'm changing my scene
and I'm doing the best that I can.

'Cause I think that lyric is funny as hell and can only be matched by "Babies in Black", a song about trying to pick up a girl at her boyfriends funeral.