Villaraigosa’s worthy effort to save city jobs

Los Angeles city employees often describe themselves as the city’s biggest advocates. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is giving them a chance to show it by accepting relatively small sacrifices to prevent layoffs of thousands of their colleagues and to keep delivering needed city services at a time of steep recession.

In discussing the difficulties that Los Angeles faces in this economy, some of Villaraigosa’s more exasperating tendencies were on display Monday: He was vague about numbers, coy with details and prone to overstatement. “This is the ultimate win-win,” he proclaimed at one point. It’s not. Nevertheless, Villaraigosa staked out important ground in what promises to be a grueling budget season. His priorities are to save jobs and protect city services. We agree.

Specifically, the mayor said that even if the City Council accepts cuts, fee increases and other measures that amount to $300 million -- proposals he refused to detail -- the city still would be so short that it would be required to lay off 2,800 workers. Rather than do that, Villaraigosa is asking that all city workers consider working one hour each week for free, increasing their share to their retirement benefits by 2% and deferring any pay increases that are due them. Altogether, he said, that would save 2,580 jobs. That’s a worthy goal that would benefit not only city employees but the larger local economy.

Dumping 2,800 workers onto the unemployment rolls would only deepen the region’s economic malaise, further taxing the state’s unemployment system and potentially burdening the city with additional training expenses if it rebuilds its workforce in better economic times. Across-the-board cuts have their disadvantages -- they can be dispiriting to the best workers, who are asked to give as much as their less-capable colleagues -- but the concessions that Villaraigosa seeks from city workers, including himself, are modest. Moreover, Villaraigosa has wisely attempted to accomplish his goals without furloughs, reasoning that the cuts to employees’ pay and benefits should not result in reduction of municipal services. He did not mention another important goal in these times, which should be to examine city services and make tough decisions about which might be eliminated altogether; we hope that objective will surface as the budget is debated in coming weeks.

In discussing his budget plans, Villaraigosa made clear that he is not stuck on any particular proposal so much as on the idea that dispersed sacrifices are better than concentrated pain. That’s a humane and sensible approach that city employee unions would be wise to embrace.