Librarians speak out against upcoming layoffs at Peterborough Public Library

The union that represents local library workers is speaking out against a proposed staff restructuring at the Peterborough Public Library (PPL).

In a media release last week, CUPE Local 1833 said library management has informed workers that three full-time librarians will be laid off as part of a cost-cutting strategy intended to trim $120,000 from the library’s annual budget.

“The elimination of these positions will hurt the families and communities who rely on the library, its services and its programming as much as it will hurt all of us who work here,” said Patricia Scoffield, the union’s president, in the press release. It’s the first time the library has faced layoffs in Scoffield’s three decades working there, she said in an interview.

Library CEO Jennifer Jones referred questions to City of Peterborough spokesperson Brendan Wedley, who said library services will not be impacted as a result of the restructuring. “There will be no cuts to programming,” Wedley said.

The restructuring will result in a net loss of only one full-time equivalent position in a workplace with about 50 employees, since two new positions will also be created, Wedley said.

But library workers disagree that services won’t be impacted by the restructuring and argue that the new positions aren’t as attractive to employees as the current ones.

Scoffield said PPL currently has four librarians. One manages the library’s collections. One manages its information systems, including the library catalogue. And the two remaining librarians develop, oversee, and deliver PPL’s programming, with one focused on children’s programming and the other focused on adult and teen programming.

The programming librarians are responsible for programs such as the Parent-Child Mother Goose early literacy program and the One Book, One Peterborough city-wide reading challenge.

Under the new staffing structure, the two programming librarian positions will be eliminated and replaced by one higher-paid librarian who administers programming for all ages and a new lower-paid assistant position to deliver programs. (Currently, there are two such assistants. The restructure will bring that total to three.)

The position of the librarian who manages PPL’s information systems will also be eliminated, with their duties absorbed by other employees. The librarian who manages PPL’s collections will not be laid off.

Children’s librarian: “I feel like I’ve been pushed out”

Laura Murray is one of the librarians facing a layoff. She’s worked at the library for about 15 years and is currently the children’s programming librarian. She focused on children’s librarianship during her graduate studies, she said.

“In any library that I would ever work at, this is the position that I would want,” she said of her current role. She said she loves to see the positive impact she makes on young people and families, such as when she teaches lullabies and stories to parents so they can share them with their children at home. And she loves kids. “They’re always teaching me something new,” she said. “They’re hilarious. And they’re so open and honest and creative.”

Murray said she isn’t interested in either of the new positions being created to replace the two programming librarians. 

The higher-paid one would be more lucrative for Murray. But it doesn’t focus on children and is too administrative for her liking; it wouldn’t give her enough opportunities to engage directly with families, she said. 

Her other option would be to take a pay cut and become the new programming assistant. That would allow her to continue delivering programs and working directly with families, but it would leave out some of the “big picture planning” that she enjoys, such as doing research and evaluating her programs. “I wouldn’t be able to have that same leadership or responsibility,” she said.

That doesn’t leave Murray with any good options, she said. “I feel like I’ve been pushed out.”

A library without Murray would be “a huge loss” to the community, according to Adina Muskat, who brings her baby to children’s programming.

Attending the Parent-Child Mother Goose program with her infant was “one of the highlights of my maternity leave,” Muskat said, adding that Murray’s facilitation work was “a huge part of” what made it such a pleasure. 

“Laura has a very, very special way that she connects with everybody,” Muskat said. “I can’t imagine the library without her presence.”

Victoria Kopf said it would be “devastating” for the library to lose Murray. Kopf is a new mom, and in recent months she has been bringing her infant son to library programs. 

Kopf said she appreciates Murray’s years of experience and education as a trained librarian. “Her ability to curate for the materials that she brings is just impeccable,” she said.

“I can’t help but think how many parents in this community have had their early infant, baby, and toddler interactions shaped by programs at the library in general, but more specifically, by Laura Murray and the kind and thoughtful way in which she teaches,” Kopf said.

Meanwhile, Murray said she was sad to think PPL will no longer have a dedicated children’s librarian. She doesn’t want to lose the position, for her own sake. “But more than that, I don’t want this position to be lost in our public library,” she said.

Council approved library layoffs as a cost-cutting measure during budget talks

City councillors directed staff to implement the restructuring during 2025 municipal budget deliberations. 

City staff didn’t originally recommend the restructuring when they presented the draft budget to councillors in November 2024. Instead, they included it on a supplementary list of potential ways to reduce the proposed property tax increase. At the time, staff wrote that the restructuring would “require the elimination of two positions at the Library and the reclassification of some positions to lower rated positions to deliver operational services and programming in an altered and reduced format.”

No further details were made public at that time regarding the exact nature of the reorganization or which positions would be eliminated and reclassified. Wedley, the city spokesperson, said that the restructuring plan has evolved since the budget passed, and it now involves the net loss of only one full-time equivalent position, not two.

During the deliberations, Coun. Kevin Duguay made a motion to implement the restructuring and council approved it  by a vote of 7-4. (See the full result on Peterborough Currents’ City Council Vote Tracker.)

Coun. Matt Crowley, who sits on the library board, said at the time the idea of eliminating jobs at the library “doesn’t sit well with me,” but that it was a “really tough budget.” He voted alongside the seven councillors in favour of eliminating the jobs.

Staff had also offered councillors a different option for lowering the library’s expenses: reducing its operating hours. But Duguay said during a budget meeting that he couldn’t support that idea.

Scoffield, the union president, told Currents cutting service hours would have been a better way to save money.

“Instead of cutting service hours, which is obvious to the public, they [council] want support staff cut,” she said. “Well, I think that the cut to support staff means reductions in services that’s way past [the] damage that would be done by, say, closing on a Monday night where we’re not that busy anyway. But council wasn’t willing to do that.”

Councillors ultimately approved a library budget of about $4.3 million for 2025 — a number that was driven higher by the opening of the new branch at the Miskin Law Community Centre and increasing costs for technology and digital materials, budget documents stated.

By approving the staffing reorganization and associated layoffs, council managed to shave about $2.75 off of the 2025 property tax bill for the median property owner.

Uncertainty in the workplace

According to CUPE 1833’s collective agreement, library employees facing layoffs are entitled to displace less-senior employees and take over their positions, a process commonly referred to as “bumping.” 

Employees who are displaced in this way are themselves entitled to bump into other positions, and the potential for a cascade of bumping has left the union’s membership feeling uncertain about their job security, according to Scoffield.

“People don’t know if they’re going to get bumped or not,” she said. Every worker at the library is a member of CUPE 1833 except for two: the library CEO and the library manager, Scoffield said.

The collective agreement also stipulates that employees with more than five years of service, which all three of the librarians targeted for layoffs have, must be given six months’ notice before layoffs take effect. Scoffield said management has yet to formally issue the layoff notices, which suggests they cannot come into effect until October 2025.

Currents asked Wedley, the city spokesperson, whether the proposed layoffs can achieve the envisioned $120,000 of savings in 2025 given the required notice periods. “The City respects all collective agreements,” Wedley responded. “The intention is to move forward with the restructuring to achieve the budget savings as directed by council.”

Scoffield said the union wants PPL to preserve the librarian positions in 2025 by using the library’s reserve funds to cover any shortfall in this year’s budget. A February 2025 report to the library board stated that there is about $470,000 in the library surplus reserve, which is intended to be used to “reconcile the library’s annual operating budget deficits, if any,” according to the report.

Scoffield said there’s a precedent for using reserve funds to cover salaries. The library’s CEO was recently awarded a raise and given a retroactive pay increase for 2023 and 2024, which came out of the library’s reserve funds, she said.

A March 2025 report to the library board stated that a recent reevaluation of the library CEO position “took some time to complete, and as a result there was over two years of retroactive pay owed.”

The CEO’s retroactive pay should come from the library surplus reserve, according to the report. “If the position had been paid at the appropriately evaluated rate over the course of the delay, it would have been funded from the regular operating funds and those funds would not have been a surplus at the end of the fiscal years in question,” the report stated.

“The Library CEO asked the Board to use reserves for her retro[active] pay, but did not ask to use reserves to prevent layoffs,” Scoffield said in last week’s press release. “At a time when other municipalities are recognizing the importance of libraries and the incredible pressures faced by library workers on the front lines of the housing, overdose and mental health crises, we can’t help but feel abandoned by management.”

Disclosure: The author is a former colleague of the librarians facing layoffs. He worked as a page shelving books for about five years in the mid-2000s.