By Denis Slattery and Shant Shahrigian, includes “In the face of staggering revenue losses, he had been saying for weeks that he might have to fire as many as 22,000 city employees in October. Hizzoner would have had to inform unions of such a decision by Monday in order to implement cuts Oct. 1. But he said at a press conference he would hold off on the move at the request of union leaders. … He said unions asked for more time to try to persuade the state legislature to ‘convene immediately’ to weigh authority for the city to borrow funds.”