Committee holds Workday fixes as city aims to use overtime bank to avoid layoffs

Councilmember Chip McCosker convened a Personnel and Hiring Committee meeting where staff warned that unresolved Workday payroll issues could undercut a labor agreement designed to avert layoffs and that short-term technical fixes are underway.

The committee heard that, as of Aug. 28, 349 positions were in “substitute authority” slated for elimination; 279 of those positions are being held in abeyance because of tentative agreements with bargaining units, and 70 layoffs were actively being processed by the Personnel Department. Kimberly Squire of the Chief Administrative Office described the headcount and said negotiations with the coalition of unions are “pending” and that a tentative agreement could reduce the number of layoffs in advance.

Why this matters: the Police Protective League’s tentative agreement includes a voluntary overtime bank that city officials say will generate savings used to prevent layoffs across other departments. That arrangement cannot operate reliably until Workday consistently applies a specialized pay calculation known in the meeting as the “171‑hour” FLSA rule for sworn LAPD personnel.

Payroll union leader Matt Garza, director with the Los Angeles Police Protective League, told the committee in public comment that members have “out of patience” with…