Employee Furloughs Affect Comm Center

A strange situation has arisen in Stockton (Calif.), where dispatchers aren’t excluded from city-required days-off, forcing the center to hire back dispatchers using overtime. The city is facing a $23.5 million budget deficit, and so is requiring all employees to take unpaid time off through next June. Some city agencies will close entirely to account for the days-off, but the comm center has to stay open. But with seven empty positions out of 39 authorized, the center doesn’t have enough staffing to absorb the absence of even a single dispatcher. So any dispatcher that must take a mandatory unpaid day off is replaced with another dispatcher–at overtime rate. That means a dispatcher’s furlough actually costs the city extra money. Read the full strange story here.