On Thursday morning, New York Governor David Paterson announced that he will begin laying off employees at the end of the year, saying that there were not enough retirements and the budget gap was too big. Paterson had pledged to not layoff members of PEF and CSEA in return for their cooperation in passing a new pension plan, which they did. However in June, Paterson said that layoffs would begin after he leaves office, but later said that it would be unfair to leave the burden of layoffs to the next Governor. Today Paterson implied that the layoffs were due to unions refusing to give back wage increases and stopping furloughs through court injunctions.
See "Paterson says layoffs are coming by year end", Rick Karlin, Albany Times Union, September 15, 2010