To Be Laid Off or Not to Be? County Workers Can’t Tell

Eliminated positions. Potential layoffs. Million-dollar shortfalls. To John Sawyer, it is all “just talk.”

County officials “get so caught up in figures, but sometimes they aren’t meaningful,” said Sawyer, who is general manager for the 10,600-member Orange County Employees Assn., the county’s biggest union. “They play a checkers game. But it doesn’t have any connection to reality.”

Reality could hit in the weeks ahead for dozens of county employees who may face layoff notices. But then again, county officials admit, no one is really sure.

The county last week approved a budget plan that severely curtails some county services and eliminates 258 positions from the county work force of more than 16,000 people. The measures are aimed at balancing a $3.5-billion 1992-93 fiscal budget once projected to fall $108 million in the red because of the recession, city incorporations and shrinking state funds.

Custodians, painters, carpenters, lawyers, secretaries, therapists, sheriff’s deputies for parking patrol--all were among the positions cut from the county payroll by the Board of Supervisors. Officials estimate the annual savings at more than $10 million.

About 100 of the jobs are already vacant. But there are so many unknowns in the mix--how the state budget will affect Orange County, how many positions may open up in the meantime, how many people can be relocated--that officials say they don’t know how many workers in the remaining 158 slots may actually be let go.

“I wouldn’t hazard a guess,” said Ken Mays, chief of personnel operations for the county.

Caught in the middle of the guessing game are those employees in health care, facilities, law enforcement and other areas who are worried about their job security.

One health worker whose position is being eliminated said she has already been assured of getting a similar vacant post elsewhere in the county. Nonetheless, the bleak fiscal picture for both the county and the state “has placed fear in all of our minds,” said the employee, who asked not to be identified.

“What’s going to happen next year? Is this job permanent? Is it temporary?” she asked. “We’re hoping for the best. We all have mortgages and families to support like everyone else.”

The coming weeks will be crucial in determining how many workers may be directly affected by the cutbacks.

Department heads are trying to determine how best to implement the job cutbacks in their areas. Officials in some agencies began meeting this week with small groups of employees considered “vulnerable” to layoffs or relocation. And some layoff notices could go out by mid-month.

But Sawyer, whose union represents county employees ranging from clerical workers to building inspectors and probation officers, said he’s heard such dire warnings before, and has grown inured to them.

Last year, for instance, amid similar declarations of the county’s fiscal crisis, the county eliminated 263 positions. Yet through reshuffling of people into vacant posts, only half-dozen workers were actually let go.

This year has been no different, Sawyer said.

“They’ve been talking layoffs for month and months. Every two weeks they change their figures. But we don’t get serious until they sit down and talk with us, and that hasn’t happened yet. . . . I’m hoping that no one will hit the streets--or a very few at least.”

Tim Miller, president of the Service Employees International Union local chapter, which represents about 600 custodians, painters and other county employees, charged that county officials have violated bargaining agreements by conferring with “vulnerable” employees before talking to unions.

“It’s an intimidation factor,” he said. “If they want a war, they’ll get it. We’ll carry the torch.”

Unlike Sawyer, Miller said he sees little room to be hopeful. “I wish I could be optimistic, but I don’t know. We don’t know what’s going on,” he said.

What is known is that the county work force will be smaller this year than last, and the 258 positions eliminated in last week’s budget are just part of that equation.

Even as it adds workers at newly expanded facilities such as the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange, the county expects to shrink its work force by nearly 8% below last July’s levels because of an ongoing hiring freeze and the cutting of other positions. The latest cuts will bring the county staff down to 16,358 workers from 17,147 a year ago, officials say.

In addition, county officials are now considering wholesale restructuring of the Environmental Management Agency as part of what Board of Supervisors Chairman Roger R. Stanton often refers to as “downsizing” government. That process could also cut the number of positions down the road.

For these reasons, officials say it may be tougher than in past years to find jobs for those workers whose positions have been eliminated.

“Every year, we’ve been cutting positions and tightening, and there just isn’t much room to tighten anymore,” said Christine Sovitch, assistant personnel manager in the Orange County Health Care Agency, who is implementing 62 position cuts there.

The county has devised a system for trying to relocate displaced workers--first within their own department, then countywide, then--as a last resort--outside the county. “We feel it’s real important to try to place as many of these people as possible,” said county budget director Ronald S. Rubino. But officials are making no promises.

Steve Snyder, personnel manager for the county’s General Services Agency, predicted that “GSA is going to feel the major impact of this.” He said that the 59 positions being eliminated there--only a fifth of which are already vacant--are more than at any time in the agency’s history.

“The bottom line,” Snyder said, is that the county will have to expect less in the way of upkeep and improvement of its facilities, with fewer groundskeepers, mechanics, painters and other workers to do the job.

Will people working in the county and using its services see the difference?

Personnel chief Mays thinks so.

Offices may be a bit dustier. Buildings likely won’t be repainted as quickly. And, he added, “maybe a few (employees) will need two waste baskets instead of one in case theirs don’t get emptied that same day.”

What Jobs Have Been Eliminated

The budget plan approved last week by the Board of Supervisors eliminates 258 positions from the county work force of more than 16,000. Many of the jobs scheduled for elimination are already vacant, however.

Jobs cut, by program Community and social services: 77 Facilities and general government services: 74 Health services: 62 Law enforcement: 31 Environmental management: 14 Source: Orange County

Researched by ERIC LICHTBLAU / Los Angeles Times