Dear Editor: 

When I spoke April 24 at the Downey City Council meeting to urge the council to speak up and oppose Kaiser Permanente's plans to eliminate 61 jobs in Downey, I expected the council to support us. 

Instead, no councilmember said anything. In fact, I didn't know how any of them felt until reading Councilmember Fernando Vasquez's quote in the paper ("Healthcare Workers Bring Kaiser Protest to City Hall," 4/26/18) when he described the layoffs as "a private matter" that he "hoped both parties could work it out."

Talk about a failure of leadership. There's all kinds of things the City Council can do to protect these jobs. They can speak out, they can hold hearings and they can pass a resolution putting the city on record against outsourcing.

The City Council claims it wants to attract jobs to the city but then acts like there's nothing they can do when jobs are threatened. It doesn't make sense.

Gabriel Montoya
Downey