BERKELEY — As UC Berkeley begins to lay off employees as part of an effort to erase a $150 million budget deficit, unions are pushing back, saying campus leaders — not workers or students — should pay for budget missteps.

Amid growing discontent over a campus budget crisis revealed publicly in February, workers on Thursday rallied in support of a clerical employee believed to be the first to receive a layoff notice: Janette Reid, who has worked for three decades on the campus, mostly as an administrative assistant in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology.

Reid said she had planned to retire in June 2017 and was surprised to be shown the door now, after weathering the drastic layoffs made several years ago during the Great Recession. Her last day is next month.

“This is a really shabby way of treating your staff,” she said in a phone interview. “Getting rid of me is not going to do much of anything for the bottom line.”

Campus spokesman Dan Mogulof estimated that roughly 30 layoffs were underway, but said he did not have an exact count, as departments and other units on campus were still deciding how to cut their budgets. Overall, the campus has said it expects to cut about 500 non-faculty jobs in the coming years — about 6 percent of the workforce — through attrition, retirements and layoffs.

At Thursday’s rally, organized by Teamsters Local 2010, some carried signs blasting Chancellor Nicholas Dirks. Some read: “Workers not responsible for Dirks’ incompetence.”

Under pressure from campus critics, Dirks this week announced he would dissolve the controversial Office of Strategic Initiatives, which he created in February to coordinate a campuswide reorganization he announced that month, along with news of the budget deficit.

After hearing concerns from deans and other faculty, Mogulof said, the chancellor determined that working directly with his cabinet and other campus leaders is “a better way to advance on all the work we need to do now.”

Follow Katy Murphy at Twitter.com/katymurphy.