Texas Public Radio: San Antonio and state agencies ready to help displaced federal workers
Brian Kirkpatrick, Texas Public Radio
Workforce Solutions Alamo and the City of San Antonio's Ready to Work Program stand ready to help federal workers displaced by the Trump administration.
The collaboration was announced during a city hall news conference on Monday to address the free floating anxiety non-military federal employees in the area are experiencing as they wake up every morning, not knowing how long they'll have their jobs.
San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said the White House actions could also slow the whole San Antonio economy.
"The rush directives and pushback has created a lot of uncertainty," he said. "And that uncertainty is contributing to disruptions and economic activity, which could further lead to San Antonio job losses."
Every federal paycheck has a ripple effect, and if someone fears they are going to lose their job, they'll stop spending, impacting other segments of the economy.
Workforce Solutions Alamo CEO Adrian Lopez said that by law private companies must publicly report coming layoffs of 50 or more, but the federal government is not doing that.
"So that's a challenge associated with who is being laid off, how many people are being laid off, where are they being laid off, when are they being laid off, what kind of positions are being laid off," he said.
Lopez compared the current scenario to the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic on the local economy, but he said he did not think the unemployment rate would reach the 13% seen then.
He said of the entire 1.2 million local workforce in San Antonio and New Braunfels, 3% are non-military federal employees.
Lopez said the first step for a laid off federal worker to get help can be found at workforcesolutionsalamo.org.
Ready to Work, headed by Mike Ramsey, is San Antonio’s "premier training, education, and employment program," and one of Nirenberg's key legacy projects to get the city working again after the pandemic.
City councilmembers and mayoral candidates Adriana Rocha Garcia and Manny Pelaez, who also spoke at the news conference, want the entire city council to consider passage of their proposal the Re-employment Assistance for Federal Talent (RAFT) program.
The proposed program calls for the skills of displaced federal workers to not be overlooked during the process of filling vacant city jobs and expediting the application process to limit harm to the economy.
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