As protests from fired city workers mounted, officials in three City Hall departments on Thursday disclosed the number of employees they had laid off during the latest waves of budget cuts.
But aides to Mayor Richard Daley still refused to name the 998 city workers dismissed in November and December or to supply a racial breakdown.
The data has been requested in recent weeks by union leaders, aldermen and civil rights attorneys, who charge that minority workers unfairly bore the brunt of the layoffs.
City officials insisted that the firings were fair and color-blind. But Daley aides said they could not release any data on the cuts because some employees were still reapplying for city jobs, and union rules allowed others to bump lower-paid workers.
A spokeswoman said 207 people were fired from the Department of Human Services. Most of them were minorities, according to laid-off workers.
Approximately 116 were laid off from the old Public Works Department, which has since been largely reabsorbed into the Transportation Department, a spokesman in that agency said.
And 79 people were cut from the Mayor`s Office of Employment and Training, according to a spokeswoman there.
Ald. John Steele (6th) said Thursday that the mayor`s continued silence on the racial makeup of those fired has only increased the controversy.
”If it`s not true that a disproportionate number of blacks have lost their positions, I`d think the mayor would want to nip the rumors in the bud by giving out facts and figures,” Steele said.
