300 More Lose Jobs in Last of Social Service Agency Cuts

In the final round of layoffs at the county’s Social Services Agency, about 300 people were told Thursday they would be jobless by May 25, bringing the total number of employees to lose their jobs in that department to about 500.

As with the previous layoffs in the agency, the vast majority of employees let go were workers who determined clients’ eligibility for Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

“People are still in shock over it,” said Nikki Niznik, president of the Assn. of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees, whose membership includes the welfare workers. “In the last wave of layoffs, it still took people about a week for it to sink in.”

Martha Cavazos, an eligibility worker who had been with the county for five years, said she still hasn’t come to grips with the fact that she will soon be unemployed.

“I think we all tried to prepare ourselves, but it’s still hard,” she said. It’s also hard to accept that “all these people are having to pay for what somebody else did,” she said.

Even seeing dozens of her colleagues laid off in recent weeks did not help Patricia Rock accept her own job loss more easily.

“You expect it to come, but when you receive (the notice), it’s a little more traumatic than you thought it would be,” said the welfare technician who had worked in the agency about two years. “ . . . You always think your job’s going to be saved.”

The welfare workers and union representatives are aware that public sympathy is not with welfare recipients or the federal workers who serve them.

“There is such welfare bashing now that people aren’t sympathetic with the workers either,” Niznik said. “It’s not like in the private sector, where someone gets laid off because a government contract dries up and there’s no more demand for what they do. The demand for what these people do is growing here.”

Almost 200 welfare eligibility workers received their notices Thursday, along with 100 other clerical workers, office assistants, systems analysts and a nurse-practitioner. While the depth of the impact on service to their clients remains to be seen, their absence will certainly affect their remaining colleagues, whose workloads will increase by 157%, social services officials have said.

The only people spared were social workers, who have voluntarily left the agency in large enough numbers that layoffs are unnecessary, officials say.

As reports of child abuse surge, experienced social workers are increasingly in demand, and officials in neighboring counties say Orange County social workers will have no trouble finding jobs.

“All you have to do is look at what’s happening in society,” said Pat Wolff of the San Bernardino County Department of Public Social Services. “We always have openings in the social worker area. We find ourselves running just to keep ahead of the load.”

And at the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services, personnel director Susan Nieblas said “. . . we certainly look forward to hiring some.”