First, the good news for state workers: Next month about 25,000 of you return to steady full hours and full pay for the first time in 31 months.

Now the bad: Layoffs are coming – the real kind, where real people go to the unemployment line.

Roughly 200,000 state workers have been without full wages and work since former GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature started twice-monthly furloughs in February 2009. Then they added a third day a few months later. One unpaid day equals about a 5 percent pay cut.

Last summer four unions representing those 25,000 operating engineers, doctors, psychiatric technicians, social service workers and a few other job classes bargained to trade furloughs for a "personal leave program," or PLP, of 12 unpaid days off over 12 months.

The contracts also guaranteed that the state wouldn't impose furloughs during the personal leave months.

In September, the program ends for those employees, but the guaranteed furlough protection does, too. (Unions representing 175,000 employees agreed to similar deals later, so their personal leave program ends later on.)

Meanwhile, the state's finances are in the dumper. July's general fund revenue, for example, was down 10 percent from the $5.2 billion projected.

This column has fielded dozens of emails and phone calls from jittery state workers who can't believe they're going back to regular pay and hours.

"Hi Jon, just curious if you heard anything yet about furloughs starting again for those unions whose 12 months of furlough protection is almost over?" one state worker asked in an email. "With revenues not as expected, I would assume Brown may have to look at imposing at least a one day minimum furlough …"

Schwarzenegger almost certainly would have considered it. He thought public employee unions needed taming and used furloughs for bargaining leverage.

But Democrat Jerry Brown won his gubernatorial encore with union muscle. He thinks furloughs hurt government more than help it.

On Wednesday, for example, administration attorney David Tyra said during an appellate court hearing in Sacramento that Brown "has no intention of reviving the furlough program."

Layoffs? Different story.

The 2011-12 budget envisions about 5,000 fewer employees, and that's if optimistic revenue estimates hold. If they don't, January "trigger" budget cuts are supposed to kick in, almost certainly igniting more terminations.

For years, departments have sometimes brushed off job-cut "drills" by fudging their numbers, eliminating phantom positions or other gimmicks. But the state has been broke through several budget cycles and has run several drills. This time, the bag of tricks is empty.

A footnote on government charts issued this month – detailing 841 parole division layoffs – made the point: "Reductions reflect actual 'bodies' to be eliminated."

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. Read his blog, The State Worker, at sacbee.com/blogs.

• Read more articles by Jon Ortiz