Spotlight PA: State Won’t Pay 9,000 Employees After April 10 To Reduce State Spending

On April 3, Spotlight PA reported the Wolf Administration told nearly 9,000 employees-- more than 12 percent of the state’s workforce-- it will stop paying them on April 10 in order to reduce state spending in the face of the COVID-19 shutdown.

The affected employees have jobs that cannot be completed through teleworking.

7,457 of the jobs are in PennDOT-- about 5,700; the Department of Labor and Industry-- 908 and the Department of Revenue-- 849.

Employees have the option of using paid leave, unpaid leave or they can file for unemployment compensation.

These steps are in addition to laying off about 2,500 part-time and seasonal state employees on March 29 and freezing hiring and nonessential purchases on March 23.

The Department of Revenue reported a $294.6 reduction in state revenue during March which only covered a portion of the state shutdown.

The Independent Fiscal Office is scheduled to announce the first estimates of the COVID-19 shutdown on state revenues on April 8.

Previous Layoffs

With respect to DEP and DCNR, DCNR reported just over 700 wage employees and interns have been laid off.  DEP has not reported any numbers yet.

The last time layoffs affected DEP and DCNR was in 2009 and 2010 when Gov. Rendell laid off state workers and eliminated positions.

In FY 2009-10, 147 employees and vacancies were eliminated from DEP and DCNR and another 186 full-time vacant positions were axed for a total reduction of 333 positions.  
In addition, Gov. Rendell laid off 1,131 seasonal workers at DCNR and 240 seasonal positions were eliminated. Read more here.

The FY 2010-11 erased 16 years of General Fund support for state environmental programs.  Read more here.
Of course, DEP has had more than 25 percent of its full-time positions eliminated since 2003 because of regular and frequent budget cuts and billions of dollars in environmental funding has been diverted since then to balance the state budget and fund other unrelated programs. Read more here.

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Related Article:
State Employees Pension Fund To Allow COVID-19-Related Distributions From Deferred Compensation Plan Accounts
[Posted: April 3, 2020]