Mayor Rob Ford is making layoffs of some of the city’s roughly 50,000 employees sound like a virtual certainty.

Ford made the remarks Friday morning in an interview on AM 640’s The John Oakley Morning Show.

“In business the first thing you look at is the labour. Your labour should be making up maximum 20 per cent, not what we’re at, 80 per cent, it’s just unheard of. So we’re going to have to take a serious look at union and non-union employees and looking at exactly what they’re doing and taking it from there . . . ,” Ford told Oakley.

“The last thing we want to do is layoff, Johnny, but when (payroll) makes up 80 per cent of your budget, there’s a lot of gravy there.

“There’s a lot of people, unfortunately, there’s just not enough work to go around.”

Ford’s payroll figures, however, don’t jibe with the official city numbers for this year’s $9.38 billion operating budget.

A February staff report to Ford and other members of his executive committee states: “Altogether, salaries and benefits account for nearly 48 per cent of the city’s 2011 BC recommended gross operating budget.”

The city is offering a buyout package, worth up to six month’s salary, to 17,000 staff. The offer does not apply to several categories including police officers, firefighters and TTC staff.

When Oakley asked the mayor about the costs of shedding staff, Ford said it would be short term pain for long term gain.

“It’s going to cost us a bit now but it will save us millions and millions of dollars in the long run . . . We’re trying to clean up a mess that was left behind.”

Despite the layoff threat, Ford made balancing the 2012 budget sound positively easy.

“We’ve saved over $70 million in the first six months so if we can find $70 million I’m sure we can save $700 million, that’s for sure,” Ford said.

“So many great ideas are coming forward and then it’s for us to implement it. There’s tonnes of gravy,” he said, Ford’s pet word for waste.

The mayor repeated that taxpayers won’t be hit with a property tax higher than 3 per cent next year. “Not one dime higher than that.”

He also downplayed controversial proposals coming out of KPMG consultant’s reports suggesting cuts that have included closing daycares, long-term care homes, Riverdale Farm and local zoos, taking fluoride out of drinking water, merging fire and ambulance services and reducing recycling targets.

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Ford noted this is one step in a long budget process.

“These are just some ideas they’re looking into and saying this is what you could do and then give you the option.”