Furlough Program Is Popular : County Employees Take Unpaid Leave

For San Diego County personnel analyst Linda Insinger, the choice was simple: either find a way to take off more time than she had accrued as vacation, or stay at home while her travel-agent husband journeyed to the Monaco Grand Prix.

Fortunately for Insinger, the county offers a program that enabled her to be on the balcony of a Monte Carlo hotel situated on one of the course’s hairpin curves on race day.

Insinger solved her vacation problem by taking advantage of the county’s voluntary work-furlough program, which permits employees to take up to two weeks’ unpaid time off quarterly with total job security and without losing sick leave benefits or seniority credits.

Initiated in 1982 to help the county--then facing severe budget constraints as it adjusted to post-Proposition 13 economic realities--reduce costs without having to resort to severe layoffs, the work-furlough plan has since been used by hundreds of county workers. Over the past five years, the program has saved the county nearly $2.6 million in salaries, including more than $100,000 to date this year.

“That may not sound like much relative to a 13,000-employee work force with $400 million in (annual) salaries and benefits, but given our economic situation, every dime helps,” said Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Richard Jacobsen.

Madge Blakey, the county’s labor relations manager, describes the work-furlough program as “a mutual benefit approach” that provides dividends to both the county and its employees. The benefits to the county are primarily economic, but administrators also believe that the program results in happier, more content employees who know that they can use the plan to stretch vacations or myriad other personal reasons.

“This is one of those things that, even if you don’t use it, it’s just nice to know that it’s there as an option,” Blakey said.

The county’s program was instituted at a time when the federal government, struggling with budget problems of its own, was contemplating the use of involuntary work furloughs of its employees as a way to trim expenses.

“The Board of Supervisors at that time decided that this idea of mini-layoffs, if you will, wasn’t a good one because it penalized the workers,” Blakey said. “But at the same time, we had employees telling us, ‘Hey, I’d like to be able to take more time off so I can go to Europe or do this or that, but I don’t want to lose my health benefits or jeopardize my job.’ And from that, the board decided that voluntary furloughs looked like a good way to save money without being punitive.”

The primary reason that county employees use the program is for vacations. The program is often used by relatively new county workers who want to take time off but have not yet earned much vacation time, as well as by others who simply want to take longer trips than they could otherwise.

Insinger, for example, has occasionally used the program to accompany her husband on free trip opportunities that come his way by virtue of his ownership of a La Jolla travel agency.

“The situation is, if I don’t have the time available, he goes and I don’t,” Insinger said. “So, this gives me the chance to join him instead of staying home.”

Similarly, John Woodard, an aide in Supervisor George Bailey’s office, took advantage of the voluntary work-furlough program this spring to take a three-week European vacation.

“I didn’t have enough vacation built up to spend as much time there as I wanted to,” explained Woodard, who combined one week of unpaid furlough with two weeks’ vacation time to lengthen his trip to Germany and Norway. “It’s nice to be able to take a long vacation . . . even if you don’t get paid for part of it.”

The program also is popular among new mothers who, having exhausted their maternity leave, use the furlough to periodically spend time at home with their child. Still other county employees use the program to simply take occasional breaks from the workaday world without expending their limited vacation time.

During the past year, nearly 1,500 voluntary furlough requests have been approved by the county. (The number of workers who took time off under the program is smaller than that, because the 1,500 figure includes multiple requests throughout the year by some individuals.) The furlough program is available to employees across-the-board within all county departments, with department supervisors having the discretion to approve or deny individual requests. As in the case of normal vacation time, employees are encouraged to take voluntary furloughs during relatively quiet work periods when their absence will not place a major burden on their colleagues.

One of the few guidelines governing the program provides that a furlough cannot be taken if the worker’s absence would necessitate overtime being paid to another employee to cover his duties--a happenstance that would reduce the county’s economic savings, or could conceivably result in a net loss for the county.

Though most of the furloughs are devoted to vacations or other routine purposes, the program also has enabled some county workers to cope with unusual circumstances. One such instance involved a county payroll clerk who frequently missed work because of migraine headaches.

Frustrated by the staffing problems posed by the worker’s repeated sick days, her supervisors finally began keeping track of when she called in sick and detected a pattern. The clerk’s migraine headaches usually occurred, they found, on alternate Tuesdays and Wednesdays--the days after particularly busy days connected with the county’s payroll cycles.

To help the clerk cope with her illnesses, as well as allow the payroll department to better plan for her absences, the worker’s supervisors established a schedule that enabled her to take off furlough days to coincide with the predictable migraine pattern. That change benefited all parties involved: The worker no longer worried that her frequent sick days might cost her the job, and payroll supervisors were able to adjust the workload accordingly.

Though county employees theoretically could take up to eight weeks of furlough annually, practical factors and economic considerations limit its usage to, in most cases, a week or less yearly. Not only can few workers afford to forgo weeks of salary, but most also are restricted in the amount of time that they can reasonably take off by the demands of their jobs.

Another consideration may be one mentioned, only half-jokingly, by a county employee who asked not to be identified, who said, “If you use too much of it, you might show how really dispensable you are.”

County administrators, however, emphasize that they do not examine either individuals’ or departments’ usage of the furlough program to determine staffing levels.

“We’ve never looked at it like, here’s a department where there’s been a lot of furloughs, so this might be an area where we can make some cuts,” administrator Jacobsen said. “We want people to feel free to use this program.”