A rash of resignations driven by recent pay and benefit cuts has left San Jose's massive wastewater treatment plant severely short-handed, raising the risk of a catastrophic sewage spill and forcing the city to pay top dollar for contract workers and overtime staff to keep it running, according to an audit Friday and a department report. ...

The plant predicament comes as no surprise to the city's workers and union leaders who had protested that pay and benefit cuts to patch budget deficits would only drive out skilled workers and imperil the public services they provide.

"We tried to explain to them that this was what was going to happen," said Daniel Finn, who quit his job as a city diesel operator and mechanic at the plant last year because the pay and benefit cuts "didn't make it feasible to work for the city anymore."

Both pay rates and benefit costs for Telstar's instrument technicians are lower than the city's, but Telstar's overhead and profit markup is 285 percent compared to a 40 percent city overhead markup, Kantak said.