State cuts staff at job-placement agencies

The Patrick administration recently cut about 30 jobs in state agencies that provide unemployment and job-placement assistance to laid-off workers because of reductions in federal funding.

About half the cuts came through a buyout program, which paid takers a $2,500 bonus. The rest came through layoffs. In many cases, those employees were told to immediately pack their belongings and were escorted from work by security guards.

Paul Mendonca, for example, said that on April 10 he was pulled from the middle of a training session he was conducting, led to a small room by human resources and security officials, and handed a folder. "You've been downsized," he said he was told. Mendonca, 63, and a disabled Vietnam veteran, had worked at the agency for nearly a decade.

Mendonca, who was manager of special-programs oversight, said he was then taken to his office, where he was allowed to pack some of his personal belongings, then escorted from the Hurley Building near Government Center in Boston. He said he asked for his final paycheck and was denied it. He had to wait nearly three hours for the next train to his North Shore home.

"This entire ordeal was degrading and personally and psychologically painful," said Mendonca. "I do not know what I could have done to warrant such treatment."

Linnea Walsh, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, said she cannot comment on individual cases, but all laid-off employees received their final paychecks about a week later.

She said the agency followed human resources procedures in making the lay offs and tries "to handle them as professionally as we can." She said the laid-off employees, all managers, were immediately told to leave their offices because they had computer access to sensitive information about tens of thousands of people and the data had to be protected.

"Layoffs of any kind are never easy," she said.

The cuts were prompted by reductions in federal funding, which has declined about $15 million over the past five years, according to administration officials. Initially, the state expected to eliminate as many as 70 jobs. But a smaller-than-anticipated drop in federal funds this year, plus a $4.9 million in supplemental funding from the state, reduced the number by more than half, said Walsh.

Robert Gavin can be reached at rgavin@globe.com.