Some of you may be aware of the situation that the workers of The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation have found themselves in for some time now. For those of you who happened to miss our earlier coverage here is a look at the situation:

“The State of California prison and parole department is getting ready to lay off a staggering number of its employees in order to cut their costs and comply with a court order. Oddly enough the state officials are getting help from the unions that represent these employees.

Unlike the situations in New York or the Miami-Dade area the unions, which include the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and five other unions for prison and correctional workers have all been helping. Each group has signed a contract amendment that allows the California state Department of Corrections to let go of historic job protections, reduce overtime and cut moving allowances.

There are so many unions involved in these agreements because running a prison means more than hiring guards to keep them in their cells. The facilities need to be maintained, food needs to be prepared and records need to be kept. The various unions of the workers are involved in the negotiations.

This should save the state of California roughly $13 million this year. While no explicit promise about being able to save jobs was made to the unions that made the concessions each one signed off on the changes in hopes that less of their members would be out of a job when the corrections department makes its budget cuts. Those cuts are part of an ongoing process that began at the beginning of this month. The project is expected to continue on for several years.”

While the situation is not yet as bad as it could be the organization has begun its layoffs. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation recently issues layoff notices to 545 workers, and then gave WARN notices to another 140 workers for the near future.

The cuts are being tied directly to the number of workers who are currently in the prison system. Since the prison system currently has about 14,000 fewer inmates now then when the program to cut jobs was originally conceived it is likely that by the end of the layoffs more jobs will be cut than were originally expected. Though, some of the currently filled positions may be instead corrected by attrition, depending on the number of inmates in the prison by the end of the project.

The layoff project, which has been called ”realignment” was launched on Oct. 1st of last year. The layoff letters were give out to the workers, along with the WARN notices on Thursday and Friday of last week.
Currently employees who believe, or know, that they are in danger of being out of a job, have the option to move from the facilities that are over staffed to the facilities that are in need of help at the current moment. While for some this may delay layoffs it is not a guarantee that they will keep their jobs in the long run.