Ford defends layoff plans as overdue effects of amalgamation

Mass layoff plans that could put as many as 1,190 city staff out of work just finish a job that should have been done when the megacity was created, Toronto mayor Rob Ford says.

The job cuts will eliminate more than 2,300 positions, including posts at public libraries, the TTC, police and other agencies.

A detailed list of the layoff plans – part of a proposed 2012 budget that will go before council in January – show that about half of the reductions will come through eliminating vacant positions, buyouts or deferred hiring. The rest will come through layoffs, including as many as 666 unionized workers now at city departments.

“Obviously, it’s going to save taxpayers millions of dollars,” Mr. Ford said on Thursday in his first comments about the layoff plan.

“In the private sector, when you merge two or three companies together, you don’t need three receptionists, you need one. You don’t need two or three bookkeepers, you need one,” the mayor told reporters. “When you merged seven municipalities together 13 years ago, the number of employees should not have gone up. If anything, it should have gone down. And that’s what we’re trying to do now; we’re trying to streamline and be more efficient. And that’s what the taxpayers elected me to do, run a leaner government.”

The city has about 53,000 workers. The mayor said that number has swelled by about 8,000 since amalgamation.

Tensions between the city and its workers have been rising, driven in part by approaching labour talks and news of the job losses.

Richard Majkot, executive director of the organization that represents the city’s non-union staff, said on Thursday the layoffs are already happening. Seven of his members were shown the door last week, even though the cost-cutting measures in the 2012 budget were made public only this week and final approval is more than a month away.

“The sequencing is all screwed up,” he said. “They have not finalized what services will be funded and which will be cut. How can a division say it needs an individual or not?”

Up to 48 non-union workers at city departments could be laid off, and 94 vacant posts would be eliminated under the budget plan.

Temporary unionized workers also received pink slips last week, a union source confirmed. The job cuts were made in several departments, and the union does not have final numbers, the source said.

Internal union documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show that the job losses would be spread throughout the city’s operations, with some departments feeling the cuts more than others.

The document, based on union estimates, shows that shelter support and housing could lose up to 52 jobs, or 7 per cent of staff, in part because of the closing of three shelters. Transportation services could lose 216 jobs, the document estimates, or nearly 17 per cent of its work force.

Contracts with the city’s two largest unions are up for renewal at the end of the month and both sides are bracing for a possible prolonged work stoppage.

Mr. Majkot said members of his organization – the City of Toronto Administrative, Professional and Supervisory Association – have been promised by the city that they will be placed in jobs according to their skills and will be given training if they are asked to do other work during a labour stoppage.

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Source: Globe&Mail