The company that serves food to inmates at Broward County's jails may lay off up to 124 people by the end of August, according to filings with Florida labor regulators.

Trinity Services Group has held the contract to provide food services at Broward jails since 1994. It holds a similar contract for Palm Beach County jails.

The Broward contract expires in August and the Broward Sheriff's Office has picked a different firm to do the work, said sheriff's spokesman Elliot Cohen.

"We're in negotiations but the contract has not been signed," Cohen said.

Broward operates a jail and a stockade in Fort Lauderdale and three other jails in Pompano Beach.

Florida employers are required to give 60 days notice of possible layoffs under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. The Trinity notice filed last week that it would make the layoffs as of Aug. 31, said Sarah Hada, a spokeswoman for The Compass Group, an international food services firm that controls Trinity.

The layoffs will occur at three sites in Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach, the filing said.

Trinity Services Group is one of the major contractors for prison food services statewide.

In 2001, Florida privatized food services at correctional facilities statewide and Trinity was one of two firms that split that work, worth $57.1 million a year. It currently provides food services at state prisons in Miami-Dade, Charlotte, and Polk counties and at Everglades Correctional Institution in Miami-Dade.

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