City Layoffs: Sad But Necessary
This is in response to a post by The Voter and done with the respect that The Voter most certainly deserves:
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I have been in newsrooms where major cuts of employees have occurred and know the worry of possibly losing my job. I’ve done the math a couple of times to figure out if I was one of the persons to go.
As my seniority increased, layoffs were less of a worry but sad nevertheless. In the end at the Citizen, I retired because I wasn’t enjoying some of the work that was thrust upon me because of layoffs and buyouts … mostly buyouts. I took a buyout and left. When the massive first round of the layoffs at the Citizen occurred, I looked at the line of people at their send-off party and thought to myself that those were mostly the best employees at the newspaper.
People left because they knew what was coming. Take the money and run. The economics of journalism didn’t make sense and the end of real newspapers was approaching. I still get my meagre retirement benefits from Postmedia but whether they will last is a question mark. Will the Citizen last? Employees are mostly work-at-home and the former newsroom is now a roller-skating rink.
Former mayor Larry O’Brien once said I got out of the newspaper at just the right time. I was a bit late perhaps, but I was hoping against hope that things would get better. They got worse. When I left I said I didn’t want to be the person who turned the lights off.
The City of Ottawa will likely experience layoffs come budget time and thus the “Fairness” campaign to prepare employees and taxpayers for the inevitable. The old “it’s not my fault. it’s their fault.” Political deflection rather than adult conversation.
There are good employees and bad employees. If you read The Bulldog, you’d think every officer in the Ottawa Police Service is a mess. It has major problems but many officers are topnotch. The bad ones just get more publicity. In my limited experience with the police, I’ve met officers I’d be proud to call my friends. I had to call 911 once when prowlers were spotted around my home. The police knew of them from previous experience as they appeared on my security camera. The 911 officers were fast and absolutely outstanding. They were through the neighbourhood before their top man had a chance to knock on my door. Amazing and re-assuring.
Most of those 911 officers were young and remarkably physically fit. If layoffs came to the Ottawa Police Service (unlikely), they would be the first to go. Great guys, every one. Talked with them outside after the search and not only were they good at their jobs, they had wonderful people skills as well.
You would hate to see them laid off. Others, perhaps not.
So yes Voter, good people will be cut when layoffs occur at the city. And that will be very sad. And the bad people are likely to stay. Both of us know very good people there but the reputation of the city is so bad that it can’t get senior people to apply for jobs. Too many job titles begin with the word “interim.”
But cuts could be healthy. We know from the provincial light-rail inquiry that the culture of Ottawa City Hall is sick, incompetent and ethically challenged. It will take a generation to change the failing culture of city hall that we’ve seen over the last 14 years. And god knows what the coroner’s inquiry into the OC Transpo Westboro bus crash will bring.
So layoffs might help … a little. Perhaps in time they will change the culture by bringing in new people.
It’s all very sad. During the period in which former mayor Bob Chiarelli held office Ottawa City Hall operated very much like the New England town hall meeting from which municipal government in North America patterned over time. People listened. People respected opinion. The city didn’t spin public responses. The public mattered. From the Lansdowne controversy, the one thing that became readily apparent was that staff and some politicians didn’t care about public input. The city’s own survey, buried in its website, said 70 per cent of the public didn’t feel they were listened to.
So Voter, layoffs, painful but so needed. They will help solve the city’s self-created financial crisis and could contribute to the culture change so desperately needed at Ottawa City Hall.
Ken Gray
For You:
Cuts Mean Good People Leave The City: THE VOTER
City Cuts Could Include The Wrong People: THE VOTER
Carr Shows The Precarious Position Of The Asylum-Seeker
Bookmark The Bulldog, click here
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
Sometimes after restructuring the “deadwood” staff retire due to increased work, new processes, and new managers having realistic expectations. It will require much more management of staff by the managers, sometimes a problem in itself.
The city needs to be careful they do not lower established safety and maintenance standards as it will be dangerous and false savings.
Good post. Sad but true, and if you don’t cut without “delayering” management, then you end up with a top-heavy organization with overworked employees trying to achieve the same programs with far less people but more management. I have always found the “10% across the board” cut the most dangerous. There is an assumption that every organization has 10% extra people they can spell off and keep the same programs. It is possible if they simply hire the same people they laid off as contractors, either directly or through “jobber” companies so the actual names of the people never show up. It’s much better to sever programs, preferably the most recent. Bureaucrats don’t work that way though. Instead they make cuts to inflict pain on the public in the hope the outcry will cause everyone to beg for higher taxes. Things like less recreation hours and programs, less swimming lessons, less buses and transit, you get the idea.
Depends on who is deciding who gets laid off. Current gang will likely o keep “yes men/women” and dump those who question some current decisions.
How about this for a start point. City Council asks all staff to voluntarily accept a 10% pay cut. Effective immediately. That means staff buy into helping solve the problem – and are therefore part of the solution. And the first volunteers should be the City Manager, her deputies, and all department heads.
Ken,
I’m only too well aware of the facts here – unlike, it seems, most management types and council members at the City – and I know the axe is going to fall inevitably. My purpose was to point out that oftentimes the place that the axe hits isn’t always the best since it has no finesse and can’t always discern where the best place is to chop.
I wanted to draw attention to the loss we, the residents, will suffer when the tide of layoffs and buyouts washes away some good with the bad. Yes, the City will go on but it will have lost some very good minds, some of whom are the ones with their fingers in the dike right now that are keeping the City holding on by that ever-unravelling thread.
There will be a re-grouping after the axe has fallen and the dust settles. I just hope that some of the quality people survive and are there to point the City in the direction it needs to go to re-form itself.
I hope that Doug Ford and his people, including our own Lisa McLeod, are watching and preparing to ensure that whatever takes place is a movement forward, not more back-sliding for the City. It’s clearer every day that Mark Sutcliffe isn’t capable, or maybe just not willing, to do what needs to be done and be a leader. I’m not sure if killing the City is the legacy he wants but it may well be the one he gets.
Incorporated in 1855, Ottawa has an amazing and deep history which came about under the leadership of some extraordinary women and men. They were politicians, bureaucrats and community members who put their shoulders to the wheel to give us the city we have inherited. It would be a true shame if all their work was destroyed as a result of the Watson/Sutcliffe years.