678 jettisoned as department addresses $4.6B shortfall
Staff Report
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The Virginia Department of Transportation today began issuing 678 layoff notifications in its final round of position eliminations. The staffing reductions are a portion of a three-part plan, called the Blueprint for the Future, addressing a six-year $4.6 billion transportation revenue shortfall and completing an agency-wide restructuring.
VDOT is working toward meeting a required staffing level of 7,500 employees by July 1.
Beginning Monday, Jan. 4 and extending through Friday, Jan. 8, VDOT will provide initial notice of layoff to employees throughout the agency. This final wave of employee reductions will affect work units across the agency but particularly includes streamlining administration functions such as fiscal and administrative support positions and consolidating residency offices. Fifteen residency offices are slated for closure later this fiscal year.
The Staunton VDOT office will lose 64 positions in the current round of workforce reductions and 111 positions all told from the layoffs, according to numbers from the transportation department.
“This final stage of staffing reductions has forced the agency to make challenging personnel decisions, but does fulfill its requirement to reduce staffing levels to 7,500 positions,” said David S. Ekern, VDOT commissioner. “We have strategically shifted our staffing structure to eliminate redundancies in administrative and business support functions while ensuring our emergency and incident response commitments can be met statewide. VDOT will be a stronger, more focused, more efficient agency as we progress into the next decade.”
The agency’s first wave of staffing reductions in June 2009 reduced 450 hourly-wage positions. The second wave of employee reductions that took place in fall 2009 eliminated more than 500 full-time positions.
These initial layoff notifications do not necessarily mean the end of an employee’s career with VDOT. While many employees will receive layoff notices, the agency is using vacancies as placement opportunities for affected employees. The Department of Human Resource Management has also provided VDOT with greater flexibility in applying substitution as a placement option. This will allow those who wish to leave the agency or retire to exchange places with affected employees in similar positions who are designated for layoff.
Those employees affected by this final round of layoffs who do not elect placement or who are not successfully placed will leave the agency in April 2010.
“For more than a year, VDOT has managed vacancies to serve as placement opportunities for affected employees and to reduce the number of employees who involuntarily leave the agency,” Ekern said. “This system allowed us to place the vast majority of affected employees in previous layoff phases who wished to continue working at VDOT. We are doing everything possible to provide employees with choices during this difficult transition.”
VDOT recommended in February 2009 a series of reductions to address a $4.6 billion revenue shortfall projected over the next six years. These include reductions to the six-year construction program, administrative and support programs including staffing reductions, and reductions to the maintenance and operations program such as reductions to ferry services, interstate maintenance, grass cutting and rest areas.
Many of the reduction targets were incorporated into the Appropriation Act passed by the General Assembly in 2009.
For more information about VDOT’s stage 3 Blueprint staffing impacts, visit http://www.ctb.virginia.gov/resources/2009/dec/cm_12_Organization_Staffing_121609.pdf.
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Chris Graham
