New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and nearly 500 other city employees will be taking an unpaid furlough to help address budget shortfalls caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
De Blasio announced on Tuesday that each of the 495 employees in the mayor’s office, including himself and his wife Chirlane McCray, will take five furlough days starting on Oct. 1. He called the furlough something his team “never wanted to see” but said the decision needed to be made.
“The folk who work here throughout this crisis, they have not been working 35 or 40 hours weeks, they’ve been working 80-hour weeks, 90-hour weeks, 100-hour weeks because they believe in this city, and they’ve been fighting for all of you,” de Blasio said during his press conference.
“So it is with pain that I say they and their families will lose a week’s pay. But it’s something we have to do. It’s something I have to do,” he added.
A spokesman for de Blasio’s office told the New York Times that the mayor will work without pay during his furlough. The city will save $860,000 during the week of unpaid salaries. De Blasio has told the city employee unions that as many 22,000 could be laid off if the city is unable to find $1 billion in savings.
De Blasio has also been asking the federal government for aid, but Republicans in Congress have not shown interest in bailing out New York City nor any other Democratic-controlled city or state that has fallen into debt. The New York state legislature has also declined de Blasio’s request for a $7 billion loan to the city.
