By Jim Reece -
The Amador County Service Employees International Union had an emergency vote this week and elected to have voluntary unpaid furloughs at the end of the year to avoid layoffs. SEIU Local 1021 Representative Mike Fouch said Amador County called an emergency meeting this week with union officials. “We were told by Amador County that if we did not do a voluntary furlough, they would be forced to have layoffs,” Fouch said. Terri Daly, County Chief Adminstrative Officer said she was not in favor of layoffs, but she said she needed personnel cuts. Her only option to do that, without talking to the unions, was with layoffs. “I cannot unilaterally employ furloughs,” Daly said. “It is ambiguous whether there is a provision for that in most of our labor contracts.” Instead, she offered furloughs to all county unions, all 500 county employees.
Fouch said SEIU members met Tuesday and “It was a pretty heavy vote for the furlough.” He said 75 percent of the county workforce would take the voluntary furlough somewhere between December 22nd and the first week of January, with seven workdays off of work, saving the county around 650,000 dollars. The majority of employees would be on furlough, but not safety personnel and some ineligible state mandated positions. Fouch said furloughs would prevent the layoff of 15 or 20 employees. He said the county called a meeting with the union and said it was needed to meet the budget. This came even after 24 people took the early retirement offered by the county, with some voluntary furloughs saving another 200,000 dollars. “It was definitely unexpected, when we had been told for months that what we had been doing to balance the budget was working,” Fouch said. SEIU represents about 340 Amador County employees. “Nobody’s happy to be in this type of situation when you think everything’s great and the holidays are just around the corner,” Fouch said. The union has another meeting to give the county the results of the workers’ vote. He said the state budget passage still stands ahead “Hypothetically, there could still be state layoffs,” he said.
