Analysis: Layoff talk sidestepped in outsourcing | CanadianBusiness.com

Private companies are doing more and more of the work once performed by state employees, and Gov. Bobby Jindal is proposing new rounds of privatization in his latest budget proposal. The shift has forced thousands of people from their jobs, a consequence the Jindal administration tends to gloss over as it touts the lowest number of state workers in decades.

Care for the developmentally disabled, ferries to transport people across the Mississippi River and the lock-up and monitoring of criminals housed in an Avoyelles Parish prison would be farmed out to private businesses under the governor’s 2012-13 budget plans.

The outsourcing of services is an easy way for Jindal to trim state operating costs — even if long-term savings are uncertain — and to show his conservative, cost-cutting credentials around the nation.

But the administration seems to dislike acknowledging the side effect of privatization in a down economy: hundreds upon hundreds of workers given pink slips.

When the budget is presented, the administration regularly talks of eliminating positions. When talk comes of how many of those jobs are filled, administration leaders repeatedly say those employees could be shifted elsewhere or hired by the private companies that will pick up the work, which is sometimes true.

But they bristle when filled positions are equated to layoffs.

via Analysis: Layoff talk sidestepped in outsourcing | CanadianBusiness.com.