It’s a situation so rich with irony it might be a story in The Onion, but there’s nothing funny about hundreds of layoffs in the state agency dedicated to, among other things, finding jobs for unemployed Washingtonians. Of the more-than 800 Employment Security Department workers affected by the GOP-engineered cut-off of federal funds, about half have been furloughed and half have seen their hours cut back to a bare minimum.
If this were a good news-bad news situation – and it’s not – the good news would be that furloughed ESD staff can apply for unemployment insurance if their layoffs last more than a week. The bad news is . . . well, it’s all bad news.
