The city of Sunnyvale’s Department of Employment Development took a big hit on April 1.
The Sunnyvale City Council approved the permanent elimination of 25 jobs at the North Valley Job Training Consortium, 18 of which are currently filled, to achieve a $1 million cut in the department’s budget.
That is a nearly 40-percent reduction in NOVA’s workforce. The city did not identify the specific positions.
Employees associations and city leaders agree that the cut is necessary because of a steep decline in federal Workforce Investment Act funding and the squeeze of California’s $14 billion deficit.
“We know that they’ll eventually have to go,” said Curtis Black, president of the Sunnyvale Managers Association, which represents two of the positions that were eliminated.
Fourteen others are represented by the Sunnyvale Employees Association and two by the Service Employees International Union.
California’s share of WIA funding fell 15 percent from the prior year to $137.6 million in 2007-08. NOVA’s share fell 27 percent, a $1.9 million reduction to $5.2 million, according to a city report.
Black spoke highly of NOVA director Mike Curran’s dedication to NOVA’s workforce development mission.
“It’s hard when the traditional sources of workforce investment funding are collapsing at the same time that we have more and more people knocking on our doors saying, ‘We need help,’ ” said Curran.
Employees were to be notified individually on April 3 that the layoffs will be effective June 2.
At the employee unions’ request, the council awarded an extra month of health insurance coverage through COBRA, a federal program that extends group insurance to laid-off workers. Employees will have coverage through the end of August at a cost of $14,000 from the city’s General Fund.
Several employee union representatives said that the city broke a promise made in February to talk with the unions before going to the city council.
“They were able to but chose not to follow through on (human resources) director (Erwin) Young’s promises,” said Black, who is also the city’s superintendent of parks. “Failure to hold discussions is worrisome to staff.”
Young said that he told the unions that long-term reductions beyond the Friday closures would be determined by the end of March.
“We did not make any promises that we would review that plan (with them) before we met with the council,” he said.
Black also mentioned a proposal to continue Friday closures that NOVA began on Feb. 15 in anticipation of an unexpected $300 million rescission of WIA funding. NOVA’s precise share of the rescission is still unknown.
Black said that if the closures had been continued through the end of June, rather than ending in mid-May as the council decided, it would have saved $150,000. Instead, the council’s decision will save $120,000.
Curran said that in making his recommendation he saw things differently, and continuing the Friday closures and delaying the layoffs means everybody in the organization is not working one day per week so that 18 people can work for four weeks,” and customers would not be served as well during that time, said Curran.
He expects that the change in staffing will significantly change the way NOVA works, including a greater focus on its core Connect Center services, where job seekers can drop in for help. Thus, he said he hopes the agency will be less distracted by the continuous bleeding of funding reductions.
Because the funding will be closer to the cost of that core service, he said, NOVA will be more competitive and aggressive about expanding that core service with grants for work on gang prevention, clean and solar technology training, nursing, getting young people employed and promoting policy change in government and industry.
Mayor Tony Spitaleri said he had sent out letters to consortium member cities Cupertino, Mountain View, Milpitas, Palo Alto and Los Altos asking them to help find placement for the laid-off employees.
City manager Amy Chan said that the city cannot give preferential treatment to current employees but that they can be considered for vacancies if they are qualified.
On the other hand, Young cautioned that there are a limited number of vacancies for 18 people, and transitioning employees into them in 60 days is not realistic.
“I don’t think this is a choice any of us want to make … but that’s what we get paid to do,” said Councilwoman Melinda Hamilton. “Delaying this policy basically keeps the people who know this is coming hanging for another week.”
Sixteen NOVA employees lost their jobs during the last round of layoffs in February 2007.
