A Vancouver city staffer reacts to getting his 2010 Games invitation and layoff notice simultaneously
The story of what's happening at City Hall right now is changing by the moment. We've learned that 44 staff were laid off on Thursday, and more folks will be marched to the exits soon. Stay tuned...
These are busy days at 12th & Cambie. In the west wing of City Hall, the City Manager's office is determining who will get access to $300,000 worth of Olympic tickets taxpayers purchased a few months ago. Meanwhile in the Oval Office down the hall, Mayor Robertson's staff are putting out their best dishes and flatware to begin wining and dining some of the world's elite.
The whole affair will be exhausting as there will be endless parties and late night receptions for the 17 days of the Games. Rest assured that our FOI department will be working overtime when this is all over to help provide our readers with some accountability regarding the money spent schmoozing dignitaries.
Meanwhile, the City Manager revealed last week that a big chunk of City Hall is actually going to shut down during the Games. Need a dog permit and can only get down to 12th and Cambie in the morning? Well, you're out of luck. Are you a developer and need access to the Planning Department staff? You might want to head over the LiveCity Yaletown pavilion where they'll be patting down patrons and managing the body scanners.
In the midst of all this Olympic build up, Vision chose to send around a memo to all staff that the pre-layoff notices have been issued and they will have 60 days to contemplate their future. Here is an excerpt from that internal staff memo:
To be clear, our goal is to have as few people leave the organization as possible, and we will work with the Vacancy Management Committee, managers and Unions to find new opportunities that may arise for any impacted employees. We will continue to communicate regularly with you as the different phases of this work unfold.
Communicating this kind of news at any time is not easy, and some people will question why we are doing this so close to the Olympics. We have discussed this at length and it is clear that uncertainty is one of the most demoralizing aspects to changes like this. Given that we communicated the likelihood of staff impacts in December, many employees have been working in a state of uncertainty since then. We felt strongly that we needed to provide the information regarding job impact as soon as our analysis was complete.
