43
28 JFS employees get layoff notices
Staff will be reorganized to better serve clients, the acting director says.
YOUNGSTOWN — Twenty-eight employees of the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services have received layoff notices as the agency cuts staff due to losses in state funding.
The agency is abolishing 25 positions in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2001 bargaining unit, 24 of them occupied and one vacant.
Those 24 people, all nonsupervisory income-maintenance workers, received layoff notices Monday with an Oct. 13 effective date, said Judee Genetin, acting JFS director.
Five of the job abolitions were related to changes in state child-care programs, including abolition in August of the Early Learning Initiative preschool program, which was a casualty of state budget cuts.
However, the agency plans to post and fill 10 vacant lower-paid, direct-service income-maintenance positions to improve service to a growing number of clients in tough economic times, Genetin said. Those who got layoff notices may apply for those positions, she said. JFS has about 300 workers.
“We’re going to concentrate on serving clients and making sure that people get food, medical care and shelter,” Genetin said of a departmental reorganization plan that is accompanying the layoffs.
Jim Adams, an AFSCME Ohio Council 8 staff representative, said it’s unclear how many of those who received notices will actually lose their jobs because they can exercise seniority- based job-transfer rights and because it’s unknown how many JFS workers will retire and how many current employees will get the newly posted jobs.
Beyond that, he declined to comment until he meets with Genetin on Monday.
In addition to the AFSCME group, layoff notices went to two United Auto Workers-represented income-maintenance supervisors on Sept. 21, with an Oct. 13 effective date. Genetin said both of them plan to retire.
Also getting such notices that day were two Teamster-represented Child Support Enforcement Agency lawyers, but Oct. 21 is the effective date for those notices.
Two occupied, nonunion positions also will be abolished by year’s end, one by layoff and the other by retirement, Genetin said.
Under the reorganization, the department will employ a case-banking system that is used by a majority of Ohio counties, Genetin said.
In the current system, in which one caseworker handles a case from start to finish, a case stalls if that worker is absent due to illness, she said.
Under the new system, one employee group will concentrate on in-person intake interviews, another on telephone inquiries and another on processing changes in cases, she said. “It’ll allow us to be more flexible in how we deploy the work force,” she said of the new system.
When a planned increase in the department’s telephone-system capacity takes effect, the department plans to engage in telephone interviewing, which is faster, more efficient and more convenient because it doesn’t require clients to travel to JFS offices, Genetin said.
The department has suffered a $5 million combined loss in federal and state funds over the past two years. To cope with a series of cuts in state funding, JFS imposed a hiring freeze in January 2008. It also terminated its contracts with various social-service agencies earlier this year to save about $850,000.
As to whether any more layoff notices will be generated, Genetin said: “It depends on what happens with the state budget.”