The cost cutting continues at Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, with news that 26 more of their employees are out of work.
The layoffs involve security staff, 10 full time and 16 casual, whose jobs are being contracted out.
Glenbow Museum staff have been laid off and hours reduced four times since 2009. The museum has been losing money for the last five years and says security can be done cheaper.
Sanford Lee from the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) says the cuts should have been made at the management level.
“The manager to employee ratio was about seven to one and with the additional layoffs that number is going to shrink a bit more which indicates as an organization is very top heavy,” Lee said. “What we did see was admissions going down over the past 10 years, we saw revenue from all places going down from the organization so we perceive the issue is not cost cutting but increasing revenues.”
Lee says it proposed ways to bring in more revenue and save jobs, but their package was rejected.
Donna Livingstone, president of the Glenbow Museum says with confidence that management at the museum is very thin already.
“And probably thinner than it should be and all of those people are working in additional roles to support Glenbow,” said Livingstone.“It allows us to save a significant amount going forward, which we can plan around, that way there’s no impact on our main core business of exhibitions and programs.”
The museum says it’s just been guaranteed $600 thousand dollars a year in provincial funding for the next three years and it hopes to have balanced budget next year.
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