As big cheese officials began comfortably settling in behind their desks this week, more than 100 of the Chapala government’s working stiffs were shocked to learn they were being handed walking papers and left to their own devices to find new employment.
In getting down to business, Mayor Javier Degollado launched his first cost-cutting measure, euphemistically labeled as a “voluntary retirement” program for staffers, that is presumably aimed at reducing the city’s staggering payroll expenditures.
Early Monday morning scores of low level service and office workers milled around the corridors outside the city’s personnel and legal departments, each one clutching a scrap of paper covered with hand-written figures summing up the equivalent for three months’ salary, plus proportional amounts due for 2015 year-end bonuses and vacation pay, making up a proposed severance package.
Many of the effected parties indicated that the numbers added up to less than their legal entitlements. Some complained bitterly that they were being pressured to take the deal as is, including loss of job antiquity, with a vague promise of being rehired at an undefined future date.
The city’s new legal department chief Rodolfo García told the Reporter that the veiled dismissals were targeted at phantom employees and those with poor job performance records.
However, Juan Cuevas Gudiño, local head of municipal government workers’ union, lamented that many of those on black list appear to have been singled out for political motives, with little consideration for their individual work qualifications, experience and family needs. He qualified the handling of the matter as “total friggin’ chaos.”
On Thursday, Juan Carlos Pelayo and María Sagrario López, city councilors representing the opposition PAN party, called a press conference to express their consternation. “We know and understand that, given the municipality’s delicate financial situation, it is necessary to trim the payroll. We do not agree with the way our colleagues are being treated,” Pelayo declared. He pledged to advocate for the rights and dignity of workers as head of a special council commission that has been set up to supervise and review the process of staff cuts.