City employees will have to wait another week before they know
if they’ll still have jobs come July. The city council needs to
make a decision by the end of May if layoffs are to take effect by
the beginning of the fiscal year, and at least one union official
said compromise seems likely.
City employees will have to wait another week before they know if they’ll still have jobs come July. The city council needs to make a decision by the end of May if layoffs are to take effect by the beginning of the fiscal year, and at least one union official said compromise seems likely.
For the third time in the past seven days, the city council met behind closed doors Wednesday night to discuss laying off more than 30 employees – or about 15 percent of City Hall’s workforce. At the end of the meeting, council members “provided direction to staff,” City Clerk Shawna Freels said Thursday. However, because the council did not formally vote on the direction, but merely talked about it, it remains confidential under state and local law until a final vote occurs.
A representative for Gilroy’s largest union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 101, provided a glimpse of the council’s direction after meeting with city officials Thursday morning. Afterward, Business Agent Tina Acree said the city’s proposal surprised her because it included wage cuts and furlough days – or not working one day a week – instead of a demand to cut 16-percent of personnel costs. The city originally made this demand to all four of Gilroy’s unions to help balance an expected $4.7 million deficit in next year’s $37.3 million budget. The council has a closed session scheduled for this coming Wednesday and must vote on layoffs by then if it wants pink slips to go into effect by July 1, the beginning of fiscal year 2009-10.
“At this point, the big win for us is that their actually considering furlough days,” Acree said.
AFSCME’s 100 members range from emergency dispatchers to engineers, and if they all took a day off, City Hall would practically shut down. Such a move would save more than $22,500 in salary and benefits costs each day they did not work, Acree said. That would amount to $1.17 million in savings during the course of a year, above the $1 million in cuts that council requested. Furloughs would avert the need to lay off 13 employees. AFSCME lost 27 employees – more than any other union – when 48 full-time employees were laid off Jan. 31.
City officials also indicated to Acree that the council could eliminate a planned 4-percent raise for AFSCME members over the next year, which union and council members agreed to before the economy tanked and the city’s general fund revenues shrank by more than 10 percent. That raise freeze would be in addition to the merit-based pay bumps the council has already frozen for all employees. There’s also talk of freezing tool allowances and tuition reimbursements for AFSCME employees who seek extra education to boost their careers.
“Basically, they said anything that’s an increase – get rid of it,” Acree said. “I was surprised because they were so adamantly opposed to furlough days before. But now these proposed wage cuts are callous and inconsiderate on their part” because AFSCME employees planned their finances around previous council-approved contracts, she said.
The Gilroy Management Association was also scheduled to meet city officials Thursday, but representatives could not be reached for comment. Fire Local 2805 Representative Jim Buessing, who represents 33 firefighters, declined to detail the union’s or city’s proposals and said Thursday he had not heard of any developments after meeting with bargainers Wednesday. The Gilroy Police Officers’ Association also met with the city officials Wednesday, but it was unclear if officials folded that 11th-hour conversation into talks about that union’s regular contract, which expires June 30.
The police union has asked the council to cut mounted and canine units along with other auxiliary assignments instead of laying off eight sworn officers and not filling the positions of two officers who quit last week. In January, the police department lost a handful of AFSCME support staff, but the 59-member POA did not lose any sworn officers. The fire department lost four firefighters, some support staff and six paid-call firefighters and could lose six firefighters in this round of cutbacks. Fire Chief Dale Foster has also said the department is considering cutting battalion and division chiefs who belong to the 23-member Gilroy Managers’ Association, which could lose four positions.
Public safety employees have pointed to Gilroy’s reserve fund as a way to avoid cuts, but council members have said they are unwilling to further drain the fund after a $4.7 million hit last year and an expected $8.4 million reduction this year. The fund will hold about $13.6 million next year, or about 36 percent of budgeted expenses, provided this latest round of cuts or layoffs happens. A second round of layoffs could leave City Hall with fewer than 200 employees, down from nearly 300 a couple years ago.
