City Worker Suicide A Reminder Of Layoff Pain
COSTA MESA (AP) — Less than an hour after his co-workers were told they were losing their jobs, Huy Pham headed up to the roof of the five-story City Hall building and jumped, landing dead on the sidewalk.
The suicide of the 29-year old maintenance worker came less than three weeks after Costa Mesa officials voted to issue pink slips to nearly half the city's 450 employees and outsource a host of basic services to cut costs, including the fire department, building inspectors and the city jail.
Pham's death has captured the attention of a country where scores of cities are struggling with a decline in sales and property tax revenues and the rising cost of providing services and paying for government retirees.
The incident comes as fighting with employee unions has reached a feverish pitch, most notably in Wisconsin, where a judge has temporarily blocked a state law that strips most public workers of nearly all their collective-bargaining rights.
"The sky is not falling," said Costa Mesa Councilwoman Wendy Leece, the lone vote against the massive layoffs on the all-Republican council. "I don't deny we have challenges, I am not against outsourcing, we need pension reform, but Costa Mesa cannot be ground zero, as no other city can be ground zero for pension reform."
No one knows exactly why Pham jumped, but colleagues in this city of 110,000 people say they can't understand why someone with stellar skills in carpentry and plans to scale Mt. Everest would take his life and that the impending layoff must have played a part.
Outside the employee entrance to City Hall, the sweet scent of burning red and white candles and five dozen bouquets are a painful reminder to municipal workers that they are not only losing their jobs in six months' time, but also lost a friend.
Pham was on leave nursing a broken ankle on March 17 when his co-workers were called to a meeting to receive their pink slips. He would have received one, too.
"This pushed him over the edge," said Doug Lovell, facilities maintenance supervisor and Pham's immediate boss. "The kid was so hardworking."
Union officials said Pham's family asked not to be contacted by the media out of a wish for privacy.
For many, Pham's death has been a sobering reminder of the human toll of the economic downturn that has swept not only through Wall Street and mom-and-pop businesses but also reached the public sector, threatening jobs many once thought were a stable way to make a living.
Walloped by a drop in tax revenue from an upscale Orange County mall that saw sales slump during the recession, Costa Mesa is facing its fourth straight year of budget deficits and the rising cost of employee pensions.
Now, a newly elected majority of the City Council wants to take on these costs. Elected officials voted 4-1 earlier this month to give six month layoff notices to 213 of Costa Mesa's 450 employees -- including Pham's department.
Jim Righeimer, a recently elected councilman and real estate developer who has championed the budget cuts, said Costa Mesa needs to scale back spending and the soaring cost of employee pensions to restore after school programs and street paving that were halted during the downturn and shore up the city's reserves.
The city's current $93 million spending plan includes a $1.4 million deficit. Costa Mesa currently spends about $15 million on retirement benefits.
"We don't have the ability for another hiccup," Righeimer said. "We have got to have some kind of cushion. We can't say, 'we can just kind of get by again."
The outsourcing plan has stoked outcry from the city's public employees union. Many say politics, not economics, are driving the council's changes.
Elected officials didn't consult workers about their decision, or provide a cost savings analysis to support it, said Helen Nenadal, president of the city's employee association.
"They're basically selling the city out for their political gain," said Nenadal, a 30-year-veteran employee and one who was given a layoff notice.
The layoffs and Pham's suicide have led to an outpouring of sympathy from residents for city workers, many who have held their jobs for decades. They also cast a spotlight on a City Council that some have questioned for moving too fast and not working with employees.
"If I was the mayor, I'd feel a little guilty, because someone did take his job so seriously," said Christine Costlow, 37, a lifelong resident of the city.
Since Pham's death, officials hope to work more closely with unions, but that doesn't change the city's financial problems, Righeimer said.
Nor does it change the debate over outsourcing, which was hotly contested by some residents even before the suicide.
Art Goddard, a 69-year-old retiree and historical society volunteer, said he remembers when city workers including Pham put on hazmat suits and went underneath Costa Mesa's museum building to reinforce the floor. It was grungy work, he said, but they did it with a sense of pride.
"It is just very hard when you outsource something to put in the contract, 'the contractor shall care about something,"' Goddard said.
City services targeted for outsourcing include park maintenance, animal control and street maintenance, as well as administrative tasks like payroll and employee benefit administration.
In the meantime, the city has hired a $3,000-a-week public relations consultant to improve its ability to interact with residents.
In a popular Mexican restaurant on a noisy boulevard in Costa Mesa, two old friends lamented that tensions in the city were running so high. Cost-cutting was needed, they said, but could be done with more empathy, and humanity.
"They never thought this would happen," said Jerry King, a 61-year-old retired yacht marina owner who has lived nearly his entire life in Costa Mesa. "It's one more example... of how callousness adversely affects people. We don't understand when we do something that causes somebody grief, it causes repercussions."
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