1,200 City Jobs to be Cut

By Rachelle Bowden in News on Nov 5, 2004 12:56PM

Mayor Daley is saying that the city needs to cut 1,200 jobs as part of an effort to reduce the city's $220 million budget deficit. The good news: about 800 of those jobs are already vacant and they just won't fill them. So no one gets fired. Of course, we know from our own corporate layoff woes that companies think they're doing you a favor by not firing, but just not hiring, when really you get crapped on by getting a double workload and stuff like that. yay! good times!

Another 220 of the jobs are custodial positions at OHare that are being privatized. Daley says he's also considering a plan to delay pay raises to non-union workers for 6 months and would require 2 unpaid days off for managers. Another possibility is outsourcing call center and meter reading operations in the Water Department. And.. public schools might have to start paying for garbage pickups.. and don't forget about his proposal to hike our sales tax up to 9%.

Daley has promised not to raise property taxes but even after all of the other things are done, we'll still be short about $170 million. Should we start betting on when it bill be announced that property taxes are going up?