Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made a hardly shocking yet distressing announcement at the City Administrative Officer Investors Conference at the Grammy Museum today. He called for massive layoffs of city employees. more ›

A freshly fired Los Angeles Times pressman shared some shocking details about the publication's termination policies, recent employee suicides and impending layoff of writers with The Frying Pan editor Steven Mikulan. more ›

In the face of a $408-million shortfall, the Los Angeles Board of Education approved its final budget on Thursday, "bridging a multimillion-dollar deficit in the state's largest school district with pay cuts and the layoffs of about 3,000 people, including some teachers, counselors and office workers," according to the LA Times. more ›

After being advised by police not to bring his guitar into a Costa Mesa City Council meeting, 69-year-old Terry Koken was left with no other option than to sing his troubles a capella. "The self-professed folk musician filled his three-minute public comment slot on June 21 with 'Pig Politics,' written by his brother about the corruption the political system breeds," according to the Orange County Register. more ›

Costa Mesa City Council approved layoffs for 200 city workers, eight police officers and one animal control officer despite an independent audit that found approximately $23 million in the city's general fund for the upcoming year, according to CBS Local. more ›

Friday afternoon was declared a half-day by LAUSD as an estimated 5,000 teachers and supporters descended on Pershing Square to protest the budget cuts. How bad is it? California has laid off 30,000 teachers in recent years with an estimated 20,000 pink slips already issued this year. And now Gov. Jerry Brown is looking to slash billions of dollars from the state education budget, according to the Calfornia Teachers Association. more ›

Earning less than his predecessor, incoming Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy has volunteered to take a 17-percent reduction in salary, a loss of nearly $55,000 per year, amid the school district's budget related job cuts. more ›

A 29-year-old maintenance worker for the City of Costa Mesa jumped to his death from the roof of the five-story City Hall building this afternoon, according to police. The man, a city employee for four-and-a-half years, was called into work at 2:30 p.m. to receive his layoff notice despite being at home nursing a broken ankle, according to the OC Register. more ›

Is it worse to find out that your job is being terminated, or to find out that you have a year to worry about whether your job might be terminated? more ›

Turns out the MySpace rumors were true. The Beverly Hills-based social networking company will give roughly 500 employees the heave ho, according to Mashable. more ›

On Monday Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa threatened to implement a new round of employee furloughs and layoffs if Los Angeles City Council members were unable to reach an agreement on budget cuts. more ›

A cheeky new logo, a revamped site and new account integration with Facebook may not be enough to keep Beverly Hills-based MySpace afloat and 50 percent of its employees could face layoffs, according to All Things Digital. more ›

Hundreds of City of Los Angeles employees will be laid off or subject to furloughs as of today, thanks to the start of "an austerity budget" that starts with today's fiscal year, according to the Daily News. more ›

The budget drama is not yet over! As July 1st approaches -- that's the new budget year for L.A. -- the process to let go of 761 workers began yesterday, according to the Daily Breeze. The first round will include 246 people, including employees from libraries to animal services and parks. If $53 million does not come in from leasing garages later this year, another 1,000 employees could also go to the wayside. Unions argue the layoffs won't save the city much as deferred wage hikes are coming down the line. more ›

In a preview of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's budget proposal for the next fiscal year--it will be released in full on Tuesday--the panic of 4,000 layoffs has been erased. Under the plan 3,546 position would be eliminated, but those comprise mostly of early retirements (2,400 people), those already laid off, people who have transferred to different jobs or those slated to be laid off next fiscal year, which begins in July. That puts the number of total layoffs around "several hundred," as the LA Times puts it. The LA Weekly says 750 will be either laid off or transferred to other jobs. more ›

It's not just the city of Los Angeles with budget woes, but the county, too. The massively large organization faces a $510.5-million budget deficit, which could mean layoffs for 100 employees, according to the LA Times. more ›

The Los Angeles Unifed School District yesterday voted to cut 5,200 jobs from its payrolls in an effort to solve an anticipated $640 million budget deficit. "The latest layoff figures include pink slips for 2,252 teachers, 574 counselors, librarians, school nurses and psychologists and 2,370 administrators," reported the Daily News. "That would virtually eliminate school nurses and librarians, increase class sizes in fourth through eighth grade to a potential high of 44 students in middle school, and boost counselor loads to 1,000 students each." The district will soon examine 1,500 more job cuts to custodians and office workers. Meanwhile, L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa released a list identifying the first 542 jobs identified to be slashed from the budget. In total, 4,000 are slated to be cut. more ›

Looks like it. The board of the L.A. Unified School District is poised to vote on the large layoff package to fight off their $640 million budget shortfall (to compare, the city of L.A. is currently facing a $212 million shortfall and an expected $484 million deficit next fiscal year, starting in July. They are planning on sacking some 4,000 employees). more ›

Yesterday during the meeting of the Los Angeles City Council, alternatives to laying off up to 4,000 employees was discussed. But in order to see those results, the mantra of "sharing the sacrifice" reared its head again. LA Times' Steve Lopez poses the question: "Would you take a pay cut to save your co-workers' jobs?" A 10% cut to a worker paid $50,000 a year would mean $5,000 less annually. If that happens, it won't be the first time many city employees have taken a cut. more ›

When the going gets rough... Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today took the initiative to shut down two city departments, slashing 52 positions and saving $3.2 million from the city's coffers, currently suffering a $212-million budget shortfall. The affected departments are Environmental Affairs (EAD) and Human Services. more ›

In addition to the 1,000 city worker layoffs already being discussed, the Los Angeles City Council today took action to add 3,000 more workers to that list after a financial firm yesterday downgraded the city's financial outlook from "stable" to "negative," according to the LA Times. The city is facing a $212-million deficit and a $484 one next fiscal year beginning in July. more ›

What will Los Angeles look like if we don't survive the current fiscal crisis? Or perhaps the question should be, what will Los Angeles look like several months from now due to thousands of layoffs? Last week, KCET's SoCal Connected recapped the budget shortfall, currently above $200 million--and when the new fiscal year begins on July 1st, the deficit shoots up to over $400 million. more ›

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is not willing to risk the city's insolvency so he's becoming more aggressive with fixing the more-than $200 million budget problem, saying he's willing to triple the number of proposed layoffs, up to 2,000 more... more ›

"There just aren't unlimited options here," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the L.A. City Council when he visited for a two-hour Q&A session. "We can't continue to say no to everything. We can't say no to layoffs, no to furloughs, no to department eliminations. . . . The fact is we can't sustain this business model." more ›

As the L.A. City Council tried to save 1,000 jobs by planning to spend 30 days to find alternatives, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa put his foot down and said now is the time, citing that everyday without a solvent budget means four more threatened jobs. The list includes 60 sworn firefighters, 15 custodians, 15 IT systems analysts, 26 tree surgeon assistants (and 16 of their supervisors), 60 library messenger clerks, 20 librarians and 59 child care associates, to name a few. You can see the whole list here (.pdf), which was posted by CityWatchLA. The Mayor is scheduled to testify about the budget cuts and other measures at today's City Council meeting at 11:15 a.m. more ›

By the end of Wednesday's marathon session of the Los Angeles City Council, where the budget crisis was being attacked head on, elected officials had taken action on several items, saving the city $6 million of the $218 million deficit. A small but good amount of money, but insignificant as the group also added $10 million in costs, reported the LA Times. more ›

That amount of savings is more than laying off 1,000 non-police city hall jobs, which would save the city $65 million. The proposed cuts to police translates to "canceling plans for hiring 103 officers and laying off 616 probationary officers in the academy and the department," according to the LA Times. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and City Council last year vowed to keep policing levels current at 9,963, but a budget crisis--now $218 million--is making that promise more difficult to keep. more ›

One way to save some or all of the 1,000 employees threatened to lose their job under a current proposal to help save Los Angeles' current $208-million budget shortfall is to transfer them to open jobs in proprietary revenue-generating departments like the Airport, Port and LADWP. Speaking to that, Councilmember Janice Hahn suggested taking that move seriously, calling for a "major Match.com" service to quickly transfer employees. Over 300 vacant positions have been identified, says Hahn. more ›