State employee furlough plan clears Senate
The Washington Senate has approved a “furlough” bill that would require state agencies to cut employee costs by over $69 million through temporary layoffs and other actions over the coming months. The move would affect over 110,000 state government and higher education employees.
The Senate vote was 27 to 17, with only Democrats in favor, despite the vehement opposition of the labor unions. House Speaker Frank Chopp spoke favorably of a furlough plan this week.
The plan that passed the Senate was quite different from the version that budget Chairwoman Margarita Prentice introduced earlier in the week. That plan listed 16 mandatory agency closure days, with some exceptions spelled out.
The new plan says the state budget office would allocate each agency its share of the required savings in employee compensation and allow the department to figure out how to comply. Options mentioned are mandatory or voluntary furloughs (unpaid days off), reduced work hours, use of layoffs or retirements, and so on. Agencies that don’t submit a plan would use the fallback option of closing their doors for 13 days, once a month, starting this June 14 and ending on June 10 of next year.
The Senate bill awaits action in the House.
7 thoughts on “State employee furlough plan clears Senate”
Exactly how would this bill be applied to Universities? … the same for classified and exempt (professional) staff? The senate bill as written is hard to decipher.
Thanks for your consideration,
Fred Menzia
Exactly how would this bill be applied to Universities? … the same for classified and exempt (professional) staff? The senate bill as written is hard to decipher.
Thanks for your consideration,
Does Faculty and exempt lose pay like those of us making $30,000 a year after many years of public service? Will this impact retirement, sick leave and vacation?
Terri –
The last part of section 2 says “It is the legislature’s intent that, in developing the compensation reduction plans, agencies shall strive to preserve family wage jobs by reducing the impact of temporary layoffs on lower-wage jobs.”
I don’t know if there’s a state definition of “family wage jobs” or “lower-wage jobs” but I kind of doubt it.
Section 6 says “Temporary layoffs under this section shall not affect the employees’ vacation leave accrual, seniority, or sick leave credits.”
Of course we don’t know if those sections will be changed in the House.
besides trying to save money by cutting budget and requiring furlough days, state needs to come up with ways to generate more revenue and be more cost effective and use state government services whenever possible. For example, UW/WSU hired private CPA firm to audit its financial statement when another state agency could provide the same service at a lot less and at the same time save budget. There must be some other similar contracts with private company when another state agency could have provide the service at a lower price.
My question is the same as Fred’s: will this be applied equally to faculty, professional staff, and classified staff? Many of the classified staff, of which I am one, feel that we tend to bear more of the brunt of lack of raises and other savings measures than the faculty and professional staff do, and it’s not clear that this will be any different with the issue of mandatory furloughs. Also, just because the plan is currently intended to run only until the end of the 2009-2011 biennium, if the economy and state budget have not stabilized or recovered to an acceptable level by June 2011, it seems logical to suppose that the legislature could mandate a continuance of the furlough plan and “temporary” layoffs, at a similar or increased level. One day a month may not seem like a lot of pay to cut, but for some it will mean the difference between “barely squeaking by” and “imminent disaster”.
I am one of many UW employees whose salary is paid from external funds – federal and foundation grants. If we are furloughed then that is redirecting grant funds (and in my case federal funds) to balance the state budget isn’t it? I’m not an expert, but I’m not sure that is all together legal.
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