State employees react to governor’s warning of widespread layoffs

State workers react to the governor's email about potential layoffs. (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)
State workers react to the governor’s email about potential layoffs. (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)

In an email Monday, Gov. Bill Walker warned state workers of massive layoffs if the legislature doesn’t pass a fully funded budget by July 1.

Of the 16,000 State of Alaska employees, more than a quarter of them work in Juneau. Here’s what a few at the State Office Building had to say.

Britten Burkhouse says her office at the Department of Health and Social Services was pretty quiet after getting the email from Gov. Bill Walker.

“I think we were all just dealing with the punch. Recuperating maybe a little bit. It wasn’t a very good thing on a Monday,” she says.

Britten Burkhouse (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)
Britten Burkhouse (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)

Burkhouse isn’t surprised by the email. The threat of a government shutdown and layoffs has been a possibility since the legislature recessed at the end of April, but she says it makes the situation seem more desperate. She thinks Gov. Walker is doing the best he can, but “it’s come to the point where maybe he’s using state employees as leverage to kind of get the legislature to act.”

Burkhouse is a grants administrator for the department. She says she makes sure nonprofits get money to provide services for Alaskans.

“State employees do more than just show up to work every day. We actually help protect the life, health and safety of Alaskans,” Burkhouse says.

Jim Duncan is executive director of the Alaska State Employees Association, a union that represents about half of all state employees. He says this level of state layoffs is new territory.

“It’s never happened in the state of Alaska and it shouldn’t happen,” he says. “I was in the legislature for 24 years; we never came close to this. And prior to that, that never happened either. So all the legislature has to do is fulfill their constitutional responsibilities of funding a balanced budget.”

Duncan says, if that happens after workers are laid off, those employees can return to work. He says some questions remain unanswered, like will there be back pay?

Duncan says the state is contractually obligated to give workers 30 days’ notice of a potential layoff. Notices would go out in early June before state functions start shutting down in July.

Mike Lewis (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)
Mike Lewis (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)

“It’s our job as a union to be sure that our members are fully informed and to urge them to become and remain very active in urging the legislature to take appropriate action,” Duncan says.

Mike Lewis has been a state worker for 15 years. He’s the lead courier in mail services. Over the years, he’s made sure Alaskans get their Permanent Fund Dividend checks. He says the potential layoffs are all part of a game.

“This is what they do. It’s government. It’s politics. I don’t like politics because of this,” Lewis says.

And he doesn’t think there’s anything he can do, like contacting a legislator, to change the situation.

“It’s the big people up there that make all the decisions. I don’t think they really care much about the little guys,” Lewis says.

If he’s laid off, “I’ll go fishing, crabbing – all the things I can do when I’m off. If it’s only a week, it wouldn’t bother me that much, but if it’s longer, then it’s the financial thing,” Lewis says.

Mackenzie Merrill (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)
Mackenzie Merrill (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)

Mackenzie Merrill, 23, just wants to have job stability. Before this email, she says she was getting other ones about positions getting cut. She’s been an economist with the Department of Revenue for only eight months. It’s her first job out of college.

“I just signed a year-long lease and I want to work here and I want to save money for my future. I went to college. This is what I signed up for. Entering the state during a time of severe fiscal uncertainty has been kind of disappointing,” Merrill says.

Merrill has a vacation planned in July anyway, when layoffs could begin. But she’d like to know that she has a job to come back to.

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