New York Prepares to Lay Off Civil Servants

(MoneyWatch)  In the past we have discussed how various states and cities were asking their employees to renegotiate recently agreed to contracts. In New York Governor David Paterson had discussed this with them asking for raises to be given up and a new pension contribution plan in order to save the state money. The Buffalo News reports that the unions were unwilling to give back these benefits and now the state plans to lay off 8,900 workers. New York is trying desperately to balance a budget that continues to have a growing deficit due to revenue not meeting projections. Nowadays government spending is mainly going to pay the salaries and benefits of its employees. New York has 141,000 executive branch employees alone. This means that unless government is willing to cut programs significantly the only real cost savings are in personnel. If there are not concessions by the unionized workforce then the only other solution is to reduce the number of workers.