Sedgwick County Set to Cut Jobs

It looks like bad news will be coming for the workers of Sedgwick County. According to the proposed county budget more than 110 jobs are on the chopping block in the current proposed budget. That would leave a significant number of county workers out of a job in the near future.

While some of those losses would be made by attrition the bulk, almost 80 of the jobs, will be layoffs, which is more than enough to qualify these proposed job cuts as a mass layoff action. For those of you who are not familiar with the idea of a mass layoff action here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “The Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program collects reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

For now no pink slips have been issued, as this is only a proposed budget, but the final meetings and decisions are set to happen very soon. The county will be having both closed meetings and open hearings about the next year’s budget. The county release the following information about the budget related meetings and hearings, “Sedgwick County residents will have three opportunities to address county commissioners regarding the 2013 recommended budget.  The hearings will take place at 9 a.m. July 25, August 9 and August 14.  The commissioners will vote on the final budget during their regular meeting on August 15…. The recommended 2013 budget will be presented to commissioners at the July 18 Board of Sedgwick County Commissioners meeting. Sedgwick County residents will have two opportunities to participate in public hearings after the recommended budget is presented. The hearings will take place July 25 and August 14. As well, an online public hearing forum will be available after July 18.”

Of course this is not the only county to be impacted by the tightening budgets and to respond to them by cutting back on jobs. For those of you who missed out on our earlier coverage of cuts to DeKalb County here is an excerpt, “While jobs in education are becoming harder and harder to keep as more and more schools choose to cut back on workers in order to make ends meet with their shrinking budgets and rising costs. Today we are going to talk about the cuts to the DeKalb County School District. The DeKalb County Schools are getting ready to cut the jobs of about 400 of their workers in the name of the budget… The loss of these 412 jobs is coming primarily from the support staff of the school. Some of the positions that are going to be cut include media clerks, bus drivers and interpreters. The loss of these 400 jobs will be more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines.”