It’s hard enough receiving a layoff notice, but what about
passing that dreaded pink slip onto a friend and colleague?
GILROY
It’s hard enough receiving a layoff notice, but what about passing that dreaded pink slip onto a friend and colleague?
For a handful of city employees, that has been a real option – and a real fear for those on the receiving end. The process is known as “bumping,” and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Senior employees who received layoff notices can “bump” subordinates or less senior employees and take their jobs.
“It is a really hard situation right now to face because I do have quite a few of my friends leaving, and it’s just a touchy and extremely difficult situation to talk about,” Permit Technician Gloria Gilleland said. Both she and Office Assistant Cynthia Taylor received pink slips, and the two belong to the same union and sit a couple desks away from each other at City Hall. But Gilleland’s seniority has given her the option of taking Taylor’s job with an annual salary of about $50,000 without benefits. That would be a $5,000 pay-cut for Gilleland, according to city figures.
Taylor could not be reached for comment, but she is part of about a dozen others who have been swept up with the 48 full-time and 12 part-time employees the city council voted to lay off last month. Like her, many facing bumping dilemmas have been reluctant to talk about stressed relationships, but nearly all also said they were searching for a way off a “sinking ship.”
The city council met Wednesday night in an 11th-hour closed session to consider an offer from Gilroy Fire Local #2805 to save some of the six firefighters who have been laid off by altering the unions’ wages, hours, benefits and work conditions. However, the offer was a “band-aid,” said Mayor Al Pinheiro, because it proposed the city not lay off any firefighters, but instead wait to pay them. The council unanimously voted against the proposal as it only involved wage deferments and not actual, immediate cash savings, Pinheiro said.
Jim Buessing, the head of the firefighters’ union, did not immediately return phone calls Thursday afternoon.
With the layoffs all but done, Public Safety Communicator Shawn Leaver has been thinking about his situation since Christmas morning, when he found out that Crime Analyst Phyllis Ward had bumped him.
“I personally found out that I will be losing my job in the 911 center, and the Chief was nice enough to come in on Christmas morning to share that with me,” Leaver wrote in an e-mail. Despite his appreciation, though, Leaver decried how the administration has generally played “yo-yo” with peoples’ livelihoods by telling them their jobs are secure one day and then changing their minds the next – in part by letting colleagues sort out the layoffs themselves.
“I understand layoffs happen, but there is an important human aspect to how they are handled that seems to be lacking,” wrote Leaver, who earned nearly $100,000 without benefits last year, according to city figures.
The bumping process is part of the city’s rules and regulations, which were put in place years ago and are not the result of union negotiations, said Tina Acree, business agent for the local chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 126 Gilroy employees, including many of those getting bumped.
“I think there is some validity to some sort of process like that,” but the way the city goes about it is flawed, she said.
Dozens of other employees who declined to be named agreed with Leaver’s and Acree’s sentiments, and said they were happy to leave after what they saw as a callousness on the administration’s part.
Human Resources Director LeeAnn McPhillips has described the bumping process as “complex.”
“Some employees may not be fully aware that they can be bumped by another employee as not everyone has worked for the city for a long time to know the work history of each employee and whether or not they have held prior jobs which would then give them the ability to bump another employee,” McPhillips said.
The complexity is not as much the issue as that the qualifications to bump are “minimal,” Acree said. The process sets up situations where employees can bump themselves into positions that they’re not qualified for.
“So you did the job 30 years ago,” she said. “Well guess what? Thirty years ago you didn’t have a computer there. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re qualified.”
The layoffs are scheduled to take effect Jan. 31.
