Compulsory job losses at Rochdale Council
Rochdale Council has announced 160 compulsory redundancies over the next three months to help it make savings of £64m by March 2012.
The minority Labour-run authority reached cross-party agreement on immediate cuts of £23m across services including children's and adult care.
Further savings will be implemented from June following a three-month consultation with staff and unions.
About 750 posts will be lost in total, but 590 staff have volunteered to go.
The council said that the compulsory redundancies were in areas where staff had not asked for early retirement or voluntary redundancy.
The authority's chief executive Roger Ellis, who earns a salary of £149,000, is among those who have requested to leave voluntarily.
Labour council leader Colin Lambert said: "This is a challenging time for everyone, but over the last few months we have been providing as much practical support as possible to staff at risk of redundancy, and communicating decisions swiftly to minimise uncertainty.
"We want to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum, so we've been offering staff the chance to leave voluntarily.
"These are extremely difficult decisions. We have to balance the budget whilst doing all we can to protect front line services.
"Clearly many budgets are going to have to be reduced and some spending will have to cease. We cannot make the level of savings required without affecting some services."