Axed Welfare Workers Find Irony in Joblessness : Services: Impact of county’s financial crisis felt at Glendale office, where 20% of staff will be laid off at month’s end.

Sixty-eight caseworkers and clerks will be laid off from the county’s welfare office in Glendale as of July 31--a cut of almost 20% in manpower for a branch that serves more than 30,000 clients a month, officials said Monday.

As the county grapples with an unprecedented financial crisis, officials say a total of 1,782 employees in the county’s Public Social Services Department who now serve the unemployed will soon be without jobs themselves.

“It’s one thing to decimate staff like this,” said Jan Creech, director of the Glendale office, “but the impact on human beings . . . it’s hard to even explain how much that’s going to be. We are the court of last resort.”

For homeless clients such as Terri Nichols, a 35-year-old mother of three, the layoffs will mean even longer delays for service than the four-hour waits she is used to.

“People who come here are confused and dazed and don’t know what to do, and then this place is all messed up,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “What are they going to do? There’s no security any place.”

During a noisy lunchtime protest Monday, more than a dozen employees picketed outside the office.

Some who had already gotten pink slips or expected to be laid off pondered the irony of their situation: helping the unemployed find work one day and, the next, looking for help themselves.

“We had a feeling this was going to happen, but didn’t know for sure,” said Tania Lemus, a clerk who was handed a pink slip Monday. “Our lobby’s full of people who are qualified for a job, with master’s degrees. If they can’t find a job, how will we?”

Julie Pantoja, a 25-year-old caseworker, chimed in: “You don’t know who’s better off, the people leaving or the people staying. The people here have a bad enough time now. What’s going to happen when there’s no one here to do the work?”

Catherine Balagtas, a 21-year-old single mother, was hired as a clerk in February, but learned Monday that she will be laid off.

“At one point, I thought this was going to be a secure job,” she said. “I’m going to have real problems raising my baby.”