The International Institute of Social History (IISH) is discontinuing around 20% of its jobs (12.6 FTE), following a reorganization announced at the beginning of this year. The institute has been struggling with a structural financial deficit of more than half a million euros as a result of many years of gradual government cutbacks.
‘A painful intervention, but one that has been delayed too long’, says Henk Wals, director of the IISH since the end of last year. ‘We will have to say farewell to a number of valued colleagues, many of whom have given some of their best work over many years to the Institute. But we cannot continue to spend more money than we receive year after year. We are still international leaders in the area of sociohistorical research. If we wish to survive and maintain this position, then reorganization is a necessity.’
With the new organization, the institute has chosen to concentrate on research into worldwide long-term developments in labour and labour relations, the collection of digital archives and the establishment of databases, whereby advanced methods and techniques are applied for data processing and analysis.
The world-renowned archive and library collection of the IISH will remain, as always, available for research purposes. However, the yearly growth in paper archives will slow by around 75% over time. This is because the submissions by many donors to the archive will, in future, be digital. It is because of this that a large proportion of the job cuts will affect personnel in the department of Collection Processing and Public Services. The Research and the Digital Infrastructure departments will take on more staff, however.
The affected employees were informed about the redundancies Friday, 22 November 2013. The new organization will be in effect as of 1 January 2014.