Florida Clerks to Take Large Job Cuts

In the state of Florida the workers in the courts have been put on notice that there may  be a lot fewer of them if the new state budget stays the way that it is. The proposed layoffs are expected to impact about 900 courts clerks when state court offices through the state are expected to be closed, putting all of the workers in those facilities out of a job.

While you may not give much of a thought to the value of a court clerk they do a lot of the little things that keep paperwork moving in the state. They manage things like court filing, child support paperwork and process traffic ticket payments. While none of these thing may be flashy, they are deemed important enough that the  Florida state legislature actually sets the budget for those items. So, if the state budget is not righted it will directly lead to the cut of jobs and closures of the facilities in the state.

The decision to cut the budget for the state was not an easy one, but it was needed. A joint decision by the Florida state House and Senate budget committee resulted in a budget that was cut be about  $30 million. While the court clerks layoffs will help to cut back on the budget it is not the only cutback that will be needed to satisfy the gap in the states $70 billion budget.

If the budget stays as it is the layoffs will impact a serious number of workers. 175 cuts are expected to come from the court clerks in the county of Miami-Dade, 67 job cuts are expected to come from Duval County, 55 court workers will come from clerks in Palm Beach County, 65 clerks will be cut from the positions in Broward County, 42 job cuts will come from Hillsborough and Orange County respectively, 38 job cuts from Pinellas County, 35 employees from the workers in Seminole County, 26  from Volusia County, 16 workers from Lee Count,; 10 workers will be cut from Escambia County, and finally nine workers will come from the positions in Leon County.

Of course there may be some changes to the budget if the final vote, which is taking place today, does not go well.  If these layoffs stand they will not be the isolated cuts. The state did very poorly in its overall layoffs last year, leaving many Florida residents to wonder when things will get better. For those of you who missed out earlier cover on mass layoffs in Florida her is an excerpt:

“In order to earn its position Florida had 91 mass layoff actions during the month of October. This means that at minimum 4550 people had to lose their jobs in order for the state to have earned this spot, and remember that number assumes that each of those layoffs only cut 50 workers, a scenario that is fairly unlikely.

Even though total numbers are not seasonally adjusted we can see that this is a big growth compared to previous months for the state. In the month of September there were only 69 mass layoffs in Florida, before that in August there were 78.”