Does City Manager T.C. Broadnax believe that Austin is employing too many workers? Carol Guthrie, a longtime leader of the union representing the city’s employees, AFSCME Local 1624, fears he does.
Guthrie told the Chronicle last week that she is in communication with a city employee who said that Broadnax expressed this opinion during a meeting in the fall with the leaders of the city’s 45 departments. Guthrie said the employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, told her that Broadnax made the comment as he discussed the city’s ongoing effort to consolidate the services offered by different city departments, known as the Shared Services Optimization process.
“First, he said there won’t be any layoffs,” Guthrie said. “Then, in this meeting, he said that the city is bloated. They have about 1,500 to 2,000 too many employees.”…