When he comes back from vacation next week, one City Hall worker will discover he doesn’t have a job anymore, union leader Ronald Hobson (pictured) announced.
The worker, a member of AFSCME Local 884, is one of a small number of city employees expected to be bumped out of a job in the aftermath of a recent round of layoffs.
Hobson, the president of Local 884, called the situation facing the bumped worker “unfair.”
“He’s been laid off and he don’t know he’s been laid off,” Hobson said. “Would you want to be notified that way?” Hobson declined to identify the worker, saying only that the person is one of the 502 members of his union, which represents office workers.
The city announced 34 layoffs last week in effort to balance its FY08-09 budget. Five of those layoffs hit Local 884. Officials are still working out details involving some laid-off workers who have rights to bump lower-level employees out of their jobs.
Stopping by City Hall Friday to drop off paperwork for retiring employees, Hobson described his and the city’s efforts to mitigate the effects of the layoffs. The result: Only one worker from the union, the one on vacation, will be forced out of a job.
After meeting with city officials earlier this week, Hobson returned to the city labor relations department Friday morning to convey a couple of final decisions: Two of his members, elderly women in the Finance Department, decided to take the city’s retirement offer.
Marie Vendetto, 83, an account clerk level IV and Ruth Schleifer, 79, a collection clerk, both had bumping rights, meaning they could have stayed with the city if they wanted to bump a less senior person out of a job. Both opted instead to take the city’s severance agreement, according to Hobson.
According to the severance package, they’ll get a lump sum of $5,000, health care benefits through Dec. 31, and three months of access to an employee emotional counseling program. Those enrolled in the city pension plan also get to add two years’ service and two years to their age for the purposes of pension calculations. (Click here to read the agreement itself.)
The third person in 884 with bumping rights, former Fire Department data clerk Dawn Jackson, will start a new job a week from Monday, bumping out the unnamed employee.
Hobson announced that the city has also managed to find new jobs for the two laid off workers in 884 who didn’t have bumping rights. Housing Inspector Anthony Alvarado is expected to remain in his line of work, thanks to another housing inspector who offered to retire. Gwendolyn Crutchfield, a data control clerk in the Finance Department, has found a new job within the city, too.
Few of the 34 laid-off employees have bumping rights. The city calculated that there were only six such people, three in Local 884 and three in AFSCME Local 3144, the city’s management union.
In a two-hour meeting in City Hall Friday morning, representatives from Local 3144 met with the city to discuss the fate of their workers. They went through a list of all the laid off employees, discussing whether they had bumping rights, according to the union’s president, Larry Amendola. No final decisions were made, he said.
Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts said the city aims to complete those discussions by next Friday, at which point city workers will find out if they’ll be bumped out of a job.
“We don’t anticipate that there will be that many people who will be bumped,” Smuts said. “It is our expectation that very few people will be impacted.”
Judging by current figures from the city and unions, the bumping should affect no more than four people.
While he was glad to be able to help lessen the blow of the last wave of layoffs, Hobson said he feared that more may be to come.
“Everyone’s nervous now, because everyone’s saying there may be more layoffs,” the union president said.
Smuts confirmed that more cuts remain a possibility.
The city’s budget, which relies heavily on state aid, will likely feel a trickle-down effect as Wall Street woes blow a hole in the state’s budget.
If there are mid-year rescissions in state aid, the city may have to order more layoffs this fiscal year, Smuts said. State fiscal analysts are predicting a $302 million shortfall in the state budget this year, and a possible billion-dollar deficit by 2012.
“Next year’s going to be a tough budget,” Smuts said. If the city needs to eliminate positions to balance its FY09-10 budget, those cuts may take place during this fiscal year, he said.
“I’m not saying we’re going to have layoffs now,” said Smuts, “but I’m saying they’re in the realm of possibility.”