City of LA to Layoff Workers

As more money woes pile up in the state of California it looks like one of the biggest cities in the state will be getting ready to get rid of its staff in a bid to make ends meet. The city in question is Los Angeles and the layoffs are at this point largely undefined. We only know that they are coming because of a statement recently made by Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles.

At a recent event, originally reported on by a reporter for the LA times blog the major said the following about the layoffs that he hopes to make a part of the budget for the city by the fast approaching end of the month. He said, “We’re going to lay off a large number of employees. I’m not going to say how many.” He then continued on to say that, “I’ve said to our employees either we get it through the City Council … or I’m going to put an initiative on the ballot the way they’ve done in San Jose, the way they’ve already done in San Diego and the way they’re gonna do in cities around the country.”

That news is less than encouraging for city workers, who are already dealing with union negotiations that may result in pay freezes and other contractual changes that will shift the burden of some of their costs to the workers instead of the city paying. Hopefully these changes to the contract, should the negotiations go well, will save some of the jobs that are on the chopping block.

All of these changes are designed to help the city deal with the $220 million hole tat is currently in the city budget. That hole will have to be filled when the budget for the year resets over the summer. While there are some other measures that are expected to help the city make its budget, but they will not be enough to help the city get by without laying off, according to the statements made by the major.
Of course, fiscal problems have been running fairly rampant in the state of California in the recent months. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of the states of schools in the states here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed:

“According to information released by the California Teachers Association an estimated 19,500 classroom teachers were given layoff notices over the past couple of weeks. The layoff notices had to be given by the 15^th of March in order to be legal under the laws of the state of California. So if an educator did not get a layoff notice by that date then they are free and clear, at least until next years deadline.

The cuts, which are coming because of the need to cut 20 Billion in funding from the state education budget. Unless the schools get a tax increase from voters in the near future, which is on the ballet, the schools will have to make these cuts, which average out to about $370 per student in the state. The only good news for schools is that the number of enrolled students at California schools is, depending on where you live, either staying stable or shrinking.”