Layoff notices going out to city workers next week
Layoff notices will be going out next week to hundreds of unionized city employees after organized labor refused Mayor Daley's demand for 16 days off without pay and comp time instead of cash overtime, City Hall acknowledged Thursday.
Chief Financial Officer Gene Saffold warned that “some city services” would suffer, but he refused to be more specific, nor would he reveal the precise number of job cuts.
He would only say that mandatory furlough days would spare 3,600 non-union employees and that the ax would fall on union members.
An earlier figure of 1,100 layoffs may grow because the target date has been pushed back and because the city's budget gap has gotten $17.1 million worse in the last month, sources said. Thanks to declining city revenues, the corporate fund shortfall now stands at $82 million, even after $31 million in budget cuts.
“I want to be clear: We do not want to lay off any employees. But, if we do not reach an agreement with our union partners, we could begin sending out layoff notification letters as early as next week,” Saffold told a City Hall news conference.
Earlier this week, Daley was still holding out hope for an 11th-hour agreement with organized labor.
“Furlough days [are]…so we can keep people employed. You don't want to see anybody laid off. I don't care who you are. They have families. They have mortgages,” he said.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that a handful of labor leaders led by Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon rejected Daley's demand for furlough days and comp time for overtime after Daley refused their demand for a two-year, no-layoff guarantee.
“We went through this six months ago and we were very creative in preserving jobs. Now, we're at it again. What are they gonna do next time, take a kidney?” said a union leader, who asked to remain anonymous.
Last fall, Daley threatened to lay off nearly 1,000 employees and ended up cutting deals with union leaders that reduced the final number to 420.
Even so, a change in side-street snow removal turned into a fiasco that the mayor was forced to reverse in mid-winter.