"I'm not saying never do layoffs," Ms. Sejen added.
"It's bad for morale, but if necessary we will do layoffs," he said.
"I don't want to do layoffs," Mr. Suozzi said, noting that he could not rule them out.
"They're concerned about doing layoffs and on the same day having a press report saying that they're having a big holiday party," he said.
"The word 'furlough' sounds nice and fluffy, like, 'This isn't painful, we aren't doing layoffs,' " said Hetty Rosenstein, director of the largest state-worker union in New Jersey.
"If Nassau University Medical Center can't do layoffs," he said, "then they can't cut expenses, which is a dead end right away".
"Some of the girls would come into the meeting and say, 'My dad's company is doing layoffs again,' " said Bev Gray, 42, a troop leader.
"With the mayor saying the budget is so tight that he has to do layoffs and cut services, how can he let this huge source of revenue go begging because of poor management?" he said.
A bill passed in the State Senate on Tuesday would require the teachers' union and the city to negotiate a new way of doing layoffs that takes into account some agreed-upon system of teacher evaluations.
"We didn't want to be in it for two or three years," he said, "and then instead of the for-profit publisher laying people off, we'd be the nonprofit doing layoffs".
