Milwaukee May Be Facing Government Layoffs

It looks like more job cuts may be coming to the county of Milwaukee. According to reports coming out about the latest updates to the budget the county may be getting ready to cut back on up to 100 workers in order to make things work.

This is not the first time that job cuts have come to Milwaukee. For those of you who missed out on our earlier to the school district here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no time at all, “More job cuts are coming to the field of public education. This time the cuts to staffing are coming to the workers of the Milwaukee Public School District. They plan to cut back on 400 jobs for the next year. They are also planning to close down eight of the schools that are currently in operation in the district. While the Milwaukee Public School District was quick to point out that not all of these cuts will be made by putting people currently in positions out of a job. Some of the job cuts will be done by attrition. For those of you not familiar with attrition it is when an open position, or a position left by a retiring employee, is simply never refilled. The school district was not so forthcoming with exactly how many of the 400 positions were going to be cut that way.”

The other part of the proposal is set to include the workers taking on a significant chunk of their health care costs, up to as much as 30%, in order to set the budget to right. Of course this move is not popular with the workers, and when things are not popular in Milwaukee the workers have a tendency to fight back. For those of you who missed out on the workers in that area who got their job cuts overturned here is an excerpt, “For most of us when a layoff comes there is little that can be done about it. You simply have to take the hit, learn to stretch your savings and move onto the job application lines in hopes of finding something suitable that will allow you to pay your bills and stay in your home. Well, apparently 40 members of the Milwaukee County sheriff’s office that is not the case. They are not taking this job loss lying down. They took their future, and their jobs, into their own hands and went to court in order to save their jobs and get themselves back on the payroll. 40 deputies were able to get an 11^th hour stay of layoff when their union was granted a temporary injunction of the layoffs, which were slated to happen on the 31^st of December.”
People who are interested about the proposed budget can read the report, which is called 2013 Recommended Operating Budget Narrative which outlines some more cuts in detail, “The 2013 budget includes the continuation of the two-year freeze on step increases for all employees. Non-represented employees have had step eliminations for two consecutive years (2010 and 2011) and are not included in this recommendation.”