A hiring freeze for Pulaski County employees has been proving to be problematic for many county departments. Pulaski County Auditor Sheila Garling says that the hiring freeze prevents all departments from hiring new employees, causing several departments to find themselves in a predicament.
“The problem we’re having is we have a couple departments that have an employee that has cut back hours, and so they want to hire somebody to complete the hours,” said Garling.
Unfortunately, the freeze prevents the departments from bringing in a new employee to fill out the workweek because bringing in another employee is considered a new hire, regardless of the fact that the number of total hours each week remains the same.
Garling says she plans on bringing the topic up to both the commissioners and the council to get a definition or a reclassification of the hiring freeze to allow the departments to hire the help they need. With no extra expense involved, being unable to hire employees to fill out a workweek has been cumbersome to many departments.
