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Personnel outlines plan to process thousands of layoffs; timeline, staffing and accuracy cited as concerns
Summary
City personnel officials told the Budget and Finance Committee they plan to train more staff and use systems to process a large layoff and displacement workload but said the assumed four-month timeline and projected savings may be optimistic given data and resource constraints.
Personnel Department representatives told the Los Angeles City Budget and Finance Committee that the department is preparing to process a much larger layoff and displacement workload than in prior rounds and is training staff to conduct layoff calculations while trying to improve systems to limit manual work.
“This assumption is we’ll be able to process 1,600 folks in 4 months. That seems like a tall order,” a Personnel Department representative said, summarizing the department’s view of the timeline. The representative noted that the personnel department deployed 50 staff in 2010 and took roughly eight months to process several hundred layoffs, transfers and displacements.
The department said it is training a broader set of personnel staff to perform layoff calculations and hopes to build systems that can incorporate civil service and charter rules so calculations can be performed with automated tools rather than wholly manual methods. Officials emphasized that any automated calculation will require multiple verification steps because of the high stakes for employees.
Council members raised operational and fiscal questions: Councilwoman Hunt asked how the department would assemble and train the staff needed to carry the workload; Councilwoman Hernandez asked for a follow-up on actual budgetary savings versus the cost and effort of the layoff process. In response, the Personnel Department representative said the department will try to double the staffing assigned historically but that exact staffing depends on positions included in the adopted budget.
Committee members also asked about retirement and pay implications when employees are reassigned or displaced. The Personnel Department representative said pension formula effects will depend on employee tier and that corrected job histories could improve, rather than hurt, some employees’ seniority calculations. Vince, identified as a civil service office representative, said employees have five days to submit appeals to civil service and that the civil service process will be designed to move quickly and will be shared with the civil service commission as it is developed.
The personnel discussion closed with multiple committee members asking for additional detail at the next hearing, including: a breakdown of expected savings vs. costs, the assumed timeline for processing different classes of employees, and a staffing plan for personnel to handle the calculations and appeals process. The Personnel Department representative said the department will report back with more information as it becomes available.
