Hundreds of state employees could soon be faced with layoffs, according to various state officials.
Due to necessary cuts made in the new 2009-11 biennium budget signed by Gov. Jim Doyle in June, many state employees have recently been laid off or put in line to be laid off, said Carla Vigue, spokesperson for the Department of Administration, in an e-mail to The Badger Herald.
“As of Oct. 31, there are 211 layoffs and people at-risk of a layoff,” Vigue said. “This number will continue to increase as agencies implement the biennial budget.”
The budget outlined cuts which include laying off 1,000 state employees over the next two years, requiring state agencies to examine their service contracts in order to reduce workforce costs and scaling back the salary raises for current state employees.
Vigue said the state did consider other alternatives to layoffs, including implementing furlough days, re-assigning career executives to temporary duties, assigning temporary responsibilities to offset effects of staff vacancies and sharing certain staff members across agencies when possible.
“If the state had not implemented the furloughs, up to an additional 1,750 full-time employees would have been laid off,” Vigue said in the e-mail.
Vigue added job vacancies in the state government went up 32 percent from this time last year, increasing from 2,394 vacancies to 3,154 vacancies.
Rep. Robin Vos, R-Racine, a member of the Joint Finance Committee, said while state employees are experiencing hard times, employees from other industries are faring worse.
“I appreciate the fact that state government is seeing cutbacks, but it is nowhere near what we are seeing in the private sector,” Vos said.
Vos said the state will probably need to make more service cuts to keep the budget balanced because of all the “bad decisions” made.
He added the federal funding will cause a huge hole in the next biennium budget, as the state will no longer have that revenue available.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state employees, was not available for comment as of press time.
