LABOR / WORRIED WORKERS : Deficit Making Federal Layoffs a Serious Threat : Millions of government employees are upset by warnings of a 22-day furlough.

This time, Bob Clark, a customs inspector on the U.S.-Mexico border at San Ysidro, Calif., is genuinely nervous.

Clark knows that each fall, when budget negotiations between the White House and Congress bog down, the government threatens to lay off thousands of federal employees as a way of living within its means. Most of the workers usually take those threats with a grain of salt, because the layoffs almost never occur; the last were in 1982.

This year, however, Clark--and virtually all the federal government’s 2.4 million employees--have received formal notices warning that they will be furloughed for up to 22 days beginning Oct. 1--and they’re taking that very seriously.

“This has happened in other years, but not to this degree,” Clark said. “They (Bush Administration policy-makers) are serious about it, and I think it’s actually going to happen unless Congress and the White House can get together on the budget.”

With the budget negotiations still deadlocked and the federal deficit growing even bigger as a result of rising oil prices and military spending, Clark and other federal workers are becoming increasingly fearful that the White House will be forced to impose huge spending cuts mandated for Oct. 1 by the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law.

If the furloughs actually take place, they will amount to unprecedented federal pay cuts.

One reason that federal workers are taking the warnings seriously this year is that never before has the government undertaken such a massive mailing of layoff notices.

Clark says that this time, for example, unlike other years, every Customs Service agent at the Mexican border has received a furlough notice. No longer is the government making any distinction between non-essential and essential personnel. As a result, if the cuts go through, drug interdiction searches and other border inspections will be sharply curtailed.

“Gates along the border will have to be closed,” he said.

White House and congressional budget negotiators say they are determined to work out a deal before the Oct. 1 deadline and avoid the massive reductions in public services that would be required under Gramm-Rudman.

For its part, the Administration has ordered every department and agency to come up with contingency plans for meeting the Gramm-Rudman-required cuts, which add up to roughly $100 billion for fiscal 1991.

Although skeptics have dismissed this as a ploy to pressure Congress, Constance Newman, director of the Office of Personnel Management, insisted in an interview that the government is not just bluffing.

“This is not just a negotiating tool” in the budget talks with Congress, Newman said. “Yes, it is drastic, but, unless something happens on the budget, it is real. I tell people they should take this seriously.”

Still, the required reductions--equal to 32.4% of the domestic budget and 35.3% of all military programs that have not been excluded because of the Middle East crisis--would be so severe they would virtually force the civilian side of the government to end many services.

--The FBI, for example, said that it has submitted a plan for eliminating a staggering 6,160 staff jobs to comply with the White House order.

--The Justice Department’s Criminal Division has warned that it would be “unable to carry out its mandate” in prosecuting cases of savings and loan fraud.

--The Immigration and Naturalization Service said that the required cuts would force the agency to impose four-hour delays at land ports of entry because of staff furloughs.

Neither side expects that agreement can be reached on spending cuts anywhere near the levels required under Gramm-Rudman, so the two sides will have to reach accord on some legislative means of circumventing those “automatic” reductions.

Federal workers will have to sweat it out until some compromise is reached and, increasingly, they are angered at being left in the middle. Clark and several hundred others demonstrated in front of the White House last week, chanting: “Furlough George!”

Argent Acosta, a customs inspector from New Orleans who was picketing with Clark, said: “I know one thing. It’s not my fault they don’t have a budget agreement.”