by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - He's been talking about it since last week, but now Governor Eddie Calvo is putting his words into action today issuing reorganization advisory number one which outlines a special displacement and reengineering program. If you didn't think it was going to happen, the Calvo Administration means business.

They're laying the groundwork for what's to come, creating a program to help displaced workers once the ax starts to fall, but just how deep and how serious those cuts will be hasn't been determined just yet. The Governor's Reorganization Advisory Number 1 encourages government employees who feel they may be laid off to enroll in a Newly-Created Displacement and Re-Engineering Program.

In summary, the program will:

Work with government directors and the department of administration to identify laid-off workers and bring them into the program voluntarily
Offer a host of services to help laid-off workers enter the private sector by providing skills assessment, career counseling as well as services like resume development
The program will also encourage displaced employees to start a small business
Subsidize college tuition costs for one year

Governor's Chief of Staff Frank Arriola said, "It's going to be a tough situation for many of our workers but we will do the best that we can to get them retooled, reengineered into another position in the private sector." On Thursday government directors will be meeting to go over the procedures governing the looming layoffs. "They'll go through the full training as to what that process is going to look like," Arriola added. "Moving forward, we will address any issues our cabinet needs to address at that time."

The general notices, which should go out by the end of this week, serve as a 60-day warning that layoffs are pending. From there, an extensive evaluation will be conducted to determine who will actually receive the official bad news. "There's a Retention Register, and that's where the DOA Human Resources Department takes all those positions that have been identified as not being necessary and they measure what the order of the layoff order is based on: years of service and performance evaluation," Arriola said.

For now, Adelup could not provide specific details as to how widespread or how deep the axe will fall. "We're working with our fiscal departments. And agencies and they will identify to get us to a certain point; we need X-amount of dollars available freed up and will give us a guide as to the approximate number of employees. We don't know that information at this point."

Governor Calvo in his advisory today said it was with deep regret he must make the forthcoming decisions to reduce, but said these are tough decisions that should have been incrementally made over the past twenty years.