By now it should be no shock to the civil servants of the world that when the times get tough the average municipal budget gets cut seriously. The once safe field of working for the government has taken a serious turn towards the unstable as the long term economic problems have caused funding to be cut from all levels of the government. In addition to the loss that many cities and counties have had in their own tax collection revenue, the local governments are getting less in the way of trickle down funding from the state and federal government leading to a double bind in the way of funding losses.

Today is the unfortunate workers of Palm Beach County who are going to be taking the job cuts in order to satisfy the needs of the budget. According to information close to the county officials the Palm Beach County Commission is getting ready to get rid of more than 900 positions in order to make ends meet. The total job cuts on the block is set to be 921 jobs. The job cuts would be designed to help the county budget to shore up it rising budget deficit and make things work again.

921 jobs are more than enough to qualify as a mass layoff action under the current federal guidelines. For those of you not familiar with the concept here is a look at how the federal government defines the term, “Monthly mass layoff numbers are from establishments which have at least 50 initial claims for unemployment insurance (UI) filed against them during a 5-week period. Extended mass layoff numbers (issued quarterly) are from a subset of such establishments—where private sector nonfarm employers indicate that 50 or more workers were separated from their jobs for at least 31 days.”

The proposed cuts are designed, if they pass a vote, are designed to cut back about $29.4 million from the budget. If all of the cuts go into effect and no agreements can be made with workers from the civil servants unions, adding to cost savings and potentially allowing some workers to stay on the payroll.

For the current moment people close to the situation have been beginning to speculate that the county may choose to, after the layoffs are said and done, to outsource some of the open positions to a private company. This tactic, which is growing increasingly popular with many cities and counties in the current long-term economic slump as a method to save money. The only problem is that the tactic has shown mixed results, in some places the government has been able to save money, in other cases the privatizing has been more expensive, and some programs have shown no real changes to the amount of money spent on the program once it has been privatized.

The final decision will be made by the members of the Palm Beach County Commission will vote on the final decision of the job cuts by May 15. After that the layoff notices could be issued at any time.