Yegparian: My Employer

From the Armenian Weekly. Many of our Oregon readers will appreciate this.

I work for a large city in California.

Late last fiscal year (spring 2009), in a fit of spite-laced “cost-cutting,” my employer decided to furlough, one day out of every two-week pay period, the roughly 7,500 members of the union to which I belong. I suspect we were the first hit because we actually had the “temerity” to go on strike a few years ago.

The next step was an early retirement program that would hopefully remove 2,400 employees from the city’s payroll. But this becomes a significant hit on the pension plan’s funds, so those still working have to pay more into it. Plus, since this program applied to all employees, it should have been voted on by all those impacted, not, as occurred, by only members of certain favored unions.

Later, and separately, my employer started applying the screws to these unions’ members too, through their more loosely written contracts. Obviously, being the “good slaves” didn’t get them much. In this case, it was a few hours of furlough, plus late payment of some components of compensation packages, and probably a few other bits I don’t now remember.

In the last two to three months, as the city’s financial crisis has deepened (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the leadership has realized how deep it is, and most likely both), talk of and now implementation of layoffs have commenced. First it was 1,000 employees. Then 2,000 more. And now the total figure stands at 4,000.

As this became clear, many people were encouraged to—and did—move to sections, divisions, and departments that are “special funded.” This means the money for the doings of the particular agency come from sources that are not susceptible to the vagaries of what the state provides the cities, or is property based, or is otherwise fixed. Where those monies come from and what they’re spent on cannot be changed. You see, it’s the “General Fund” that’s in trouble. This is the case with all cities. This is usually where police, fire, parks, senior, health, social, and other services get their money.

Now we get to the part that renders the decision makers similar to a bunch of cartoon characters.

Read more here.