As pink slips continue to go out to state workers who make up an inordinate part of the north Florida economy, business and civic leaders on Tuesday unveiled a web-based clearinghouse to help jobless government employees find work, pay the bills and deal with the emotional trauma that comes with being laid off.
A coalition of local governments and social service organizations and private companies have joined together to create BigBendWorks.com, a website backers say will assist both public and private sector job seekers by putting them in touch with potential employers, educators and support groups to help them deal with the many facets of being unemployed.
“We came together because we all realized the impending layoff in this community of thousands of employees is something we have never experienced as a community and we needed a unique and different response,” said Jim Murdaugh, president of Tallahassee Community College.
Facing a nearly $4 billion budget deficit, Florida lawmakers earlier this year passed an austere spending plan that included thousands of job cuts, hiring freezes and other measures to curb spending in the short term. Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Scott has continued to beat the drum for a reduction in government jobs.
With the 2011-12 fiscal year beginning Friday, those line item reductions are being replaced by faces as agencies follow through on cuts approved by Scott just over a month ago.
So far, layoff notices have been sent to nearly 1,500 state employees – many of them in the Tallahassee region, although more than 400 of those have already moved into other state jobs, Department of Management Services officials said Tuesday.
As might be expected, the Tallahassee area will be heavily affected – though Leon County may not be hardest hit. Large layoffs at certain individual facilities mean high numbers are concentrated. For example, with a large cut planned by the Department of Children and Families at the state hospital in Chattahoochee, Gadsden County, next door to Leon, will see more than 300 jobs cuts.
But other cuts are farther away from the capital region. A Department of Juvenile Justice facility closure in DeSoto County will cost that county about 400 jobs – nearly a fourth of the total.
Many state employees who experienced months of job-related anxiety as they watched different scenarios unfold are now reacting to the reality that their jobs have been cut, said Randy Nicklaus, president of 2-1-1 Big Bend, a non-profit support group that offers crisis counseling and other services, including utility payment and other financial assistance.
“A lot of these folks just found out in the last month that they have been laid off and lost their jobs,” Nicklaus said. “Now it’s reality. It’s not just a fear of what might happen. Now they know it’s happening so we are dealing with it from a different angle.”
Using donated services and volunteer hours, the coalition designed and built the website to provide job seekers with a one-stop clearinghouse with links to such sites as the Agency for Workforce Innovation, Tallahassee Community College, and the United Way, as well as local chambers of commerce and government sites.
“We understand that the bottom line is paychecks and jobs,” Kimberly Moore, chief executive officer of Workforce plus, a Tallahassee-based job training and employment organization.
By Michael Peltier
