More city employees will be furloughed come October, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Wednesday.
Roughly 9,000 city agency managers and non-unionized employees will furlough for a five-day period between next month and March of 2021. The furloughs are expected to save $21 million from city spending.
Last week, Mayor de Blasio announced that 495 City Hall employees, including himself, would furlough for one workweek beginning in October to increase budget savings as the city grapples with a $9 billion budget deficit over the next two years caused by the economic downturn spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.
Furlough rotations for City Hall employees will continue until March of next year, the mayor said.
“We have to keep taking action to address the situation. None of them are pleasant. None of them are things that we want to do in normal times, “de Blasio told reporters. “It’s very sad when people who work hard have to then sacrifice further, but that is what is called of all of us.”
For months, de Blasio has called on state lawmakers in Albany to allow the city to borrow $5 billion to help bridge the budget gap, warning that failure to do so would result in the layoffs of 22,000 city employees by Oct. 1.
Last month, the mayor delayed laying off thousands of workers instead of giving municipal unions more time to lobby Albany for help. De Blasio made the case, again, to increase the city’s borrowing power during a press conference on Tuesday.
Furlough notices began going on Wednesday morning to agency commissioners and will be soon sent to the impacted employees, according to Commissioner of the Office for Labor Relations Renee Campion. Departments will work out their own furlough schedules.
This story originally appeared on amny.com.
