Take buyout or be laid off, Ford warns workers

Take the city’s buyout package now or you might be laid off later, Mayor Rob Ford warned 16,000 city workers who have so far spurned the effort to get them off the payroll.

Ford, appearing Friday morning on Sun News Network, was asked about layoffs in light of a Star story revealing that his administration now feels they are inevitable because of very low take-up of the city’s buyout offer.

“Now if they don’t take the package, what else do we have to do?” Ford said. “We might have to lay them off.”

If more of the eligible workers don’t agree to leave their jobs in exchange for up to six months’ salary, the city has no choice but to issue layoff notices to cut labour costs and tame the 2012 deficit, he said.

“The last thing we want to do is put somebody out on the street so we’re working and saying here, here’s a package, I’d advise you to take it. What else are we going to do?

“If someone else can come up with a solution, let me know.”

Richard Majkot, president of the association representing the city’s non-union managers and supervisors, told the Star earlier this week he believes as few as 1 per cent of his members will take the package.

It gives managers four weeks pay for every year of service, while unionized workers get three weeks pay for every year. Staff have until Sept. 9 to make up their minds.

Majkot called the offer “woefully inadequate” compared to the industry standard and suggested the mayor’s office is fuelling layoff talk to scare workers into taking the package.

Laying off thousands of city workers would represent a dramatic turnaround from last Sept. 27 — a month before Ford was elected — when he unveiled his “Saving Our City” plan on YouTube.

“Instead of a hiring freeze my plan is to reduce the city’s workforce through attrition,” Ford said, adding that about 6 per cent of city employees retire each year. “We’ll promote from within to fill many important roles with people who already have work for the city. No need for layoffs.”

The actual attrition rate is 2.7 per cent.

Toronto is in the early months of Ford’s effort to end the annual scramble to wipe out a budget shortfall that is pegged for 2012 at between $443 million and $774 million.

The Star’s Robyn Doolittle revealed last month that the Ford administration has identified 3,000 as the “magic number” of workers they want to cut from the ranks of 50,000 employed by city departments and arm’s length agencies.

The current contracts with CUPE locals 416 and 79, which expire Dec. 31, gives about 30,000 city workers a guarantee they won’t be laid off as the result of contracting out. The Ford administration has signalled it will try to erase that clause during talks for the next collective agreement.

In the interview, Ford warned the unions not to use the threat of a walkout, similar to the one in 2009 that saw garbage piling up around the city, during negotiations.

“Don’t put a gun to our heads and say this is the way things are going to work,” he said. Asked if that means there might be a strike, Ford said: “There very well could be.”

Union leaders believe Ford’s administration plans to lock them out Jan. 1 if they don’t bow to the administration’s demands.

Ford repeated his desire to sell Toronto Zoo and one or more of the city’s three performing arts centres — the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts; the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts; and the Toronto Centre for the Arts in North York.

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Source: Toronto Star