Dixmoor laid off village employees days before water shortage
Most of Dixmoor’s public works employees were laid off days before the village’s recent water shortages, according to the village administration and ex-employees.
Joe Berry, one of the five people in the six-person department who were laid off, provided to the Tribune a letter sent to affected employees that said were being laid off “due to a lack of work.”
Village spokesman Travis Akin confirmed the layoffs, and the head of human resources said the action was taken because the employees weren’t qualified to do work that needed to be done.
According to the letter, the layoffs became effective at 11:59 p.m. Oct. 13, about three days before village residents started experiencing water shortages, which are ongoing for some residents. The village remains on boil water order.
Two employees were rehired Oct. 18, two days after the water shortage started, according to ex-employee Leonard Smith and confirmed by spokesman Akin.
Employees received the letter after two employees and a representative of their union, SEIU Local 73, met with village administration earlier that day to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement regarding pay, working conditions and other items such as increased sick days, Berry said. According to Richert, the union’s proposals were rejected by village officials.
Akin said that “these negotiations predate the (recent water) crisis” and that the laying off of employees is “an HR issue and it has nothing to do with the crisis.” Akin said that this didn’t affect the village’s ability to deal with the water shortage because it had the help of volunteers, Cook County and other communities.
According to the village’s human resources director, Anthony McCaskill, the employees were laid off because “none of them have the qualifications or the certificates or the credentials to do what they had to do,” and the village was paying extra to employ contractors. He added that the plan was to employ contractors from now on.
Smith, ex-public works employee who had been on the job since 2013, said that workers informed SEIU Local 73 that the village had them performing tasks “we weren’t supposed to be doing,” such as fixing village equipment and changing sewer mains, which saved the village money. In response, McCaskill said that the employees “did the manual labor of this but the technical stuff they didn’t do.”
Although Berry believes that the layoffs had “nothing to do with” the water crisis, he and ex-employee Smith said the Public Works Department would have handled water maintenance and issues including monthly meter readings and repairing water mains. The employees also would have been tasked with distributing bottled water, they said, a task Dixmoor’s mayor has said he is carrying out with the help of village trustees.
The letter was signed by McCaskill, and included the names of village trustees, corporation counsel James Vasselli, the mayor’s assistant and the village clerk.