Emanuel Layoffs Still Far Short of Threat

More than six weeks after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced he could dismiss as many as 625 city workers to balance this year’s budget, just a small fraction of that number have received layoff notices.

Only 165 workers were let go so far, according to city documents obtained by the Chicago News Cooperative through the Freedom of Information Act. On July 15, the mayor held a news conference at City Hall to say he had no choice but to dismiss hundreds of workers after union leaders did not accept contract concessions that he requested.

“This is a process, and these things take time,” Kathleen Strand, a spokeswoman for the city’s budget office, said last week when asked about the layoff list.

Labor leaders representing potentially affected city workers said they have become frustrated by what they described as stonewalling by the mayor and his aides.

“He is not transparent and he is not honest,” said Christine Boardman, president of Service Employees International Union Local 73. SEIU Local 73 represents scores of workers who have lost their jobs already and hundreds more who could become unemployed soon.

But city officials said they do not yet have a list of everybody who could be laid off and do not yet know exactly how many employees will receive pink slips after all.

In July, the mayor said his administration would seek private companies to perform some major tasks that currently are done by public workers. The layoff list, Emanuel said, will include janitors at the airports and public libraries as well as the employees who administer employee benefits and operate the water bill call center.

Proposals for privatizing janitorial services at libraries and other city facilities are due in September.

Strand said some union contracts require the city to notify labor leaders 45 days before officials formally request proposals to privatize public work, adding that this notice period would end this week.

The mayor also had said the layoffs would include the immediate dismissal of as many as 125 seasonal city workers who were dedicated to summer public works projects for the Department of Transportation. City records show that the actual number of those employees who have been laid off so far was far lower – only 52, including 22 heavy-equipment operators, 18 truck drivers, nine painters and three laborers.

The documents also detail the dismissals of 72 traffic-control aides and 41 employees of the Department of Family and Support Services, including 17 human services workers who help the homeless on the overnight shift.

It appears, however, that the layoffs of the traffic-control aides and the Family and Support Services workers were not intended to count toward the more than 600 layoffs that Emanuel warned of on July 15. Emanuel aides have said the traffic-control aides were let go under a cost-cutting plan announced in May. And the human services workers were fired because of a loss of state funding, officials said.

Labor activists say they do not know how many more of their members will be laid off.

Boardman, the SEIU Local 73 leader, said city officials have told her as many as 250 of her members could lose their jobs as part of the mayor’s privatization initiative.

Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees represents city clerical workers facing dismissal. Henry Bayer, the group’s executive director, said he expects as many as 70 AFSCME members could be fired when their jobs are outsourced.

Emanuel raised the specter of layoffs soon after he called on labor leaders to agree to nine work-rule changes, including reductions in overtime payments for some union workers.

Labor leaders balked, noting that most of the unions representing city workers had agreed to make concessions in 2009, including taking dozens of unpaid days off, to help then-Mayor Richard M. Daley balance the city budget. In drawing up a balanced budget plan for 2011, Daley assumed that the two-year concession agreement, which expired at the end of June, would be extended.

When that did not occur, Emanuel said he was left with a $31 million budget shortfall this year.

“I recognize that the workers affected here are people with families to support and bills to pay, and they are going to be cast into an economy that is scarce on jobs,” the mayor said at his July 15 news conference. But Emanuel added that he could not increase the burden on taxpayers who also are struggling with the consequences of the weak economy.

City Hall’s financial problems are only expected to deepen, with officials forecasting a $635.7 million deficit in 2012.