With this month's layoff warning, many of those people are fearing for their jobs, even as Boeing depends on them to help it out of a jam.

Budget Gap Predictions On the same day of the layoff warning, City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman was preparing to predict a possible $2.6 billion gap in the city budget for the fiscal year that starts next July -nearly twice Mr. Michael's estimate.

He also said that the layoff warning was not meant as a tactic in union negotiations.

Mr. Hill and Mr. Feinstein, caught unaware by the layoff warning, denounced it as a betrayal.

While Mr. Sweeney sought to give the strikers the wherewithal for a long strike, James Kelly, the U.P.S. chairman, issued a layoff warning that union officials said was intended to push the strikers to return to work.

The other day, both men, who had received layoff warnings, stood contemplating their uncertain future.

Ruling Is Termed Divisive In recent weeks nearly 800 teachers have received layoff warnings, although school officials expect the number of actual layoffs next fall to be closer to 400.

Indeed, when the layoff warnings were issued, a local business leader, David Bleakley, found evocations in the vessel that haunted the shipyard's reputation as the world's busiest cruise-ship builder in the early 20th century - the supposedly unsinkable Titanic, which went down on its maiden voyage in 1912.

The layoff warnings, he said, were "only the tip of what could become a very dangerous iceberg for the Northern Ireland economy."

Given Ameren's layoff warnings and talk of bankruptcy, is there any discussion of pay cuts in the executive suite?