Across the city, though, the impact of these cuts has been largely mitigated by the assignment of nearly 5,000 workfare employees to work in parks.

Instead, he asserted that the workfare employees are doing work for the city that has not been done by other people in some time.

The jobs performed by workfare employees, he argues, either were never done by city workers or had not been done for several years.

The series questioned whether today's 34,000 workfare employees were in fact replacing city workers, thus creating a churning competition for jobs at the bottom of the ladder.

Officials in some nonprofit groups that have used workfare employees say the workers enable them to stretch their tight budgets and provide services that they could not otherwise afford.

They also attacked workfare for forcing many recipients to quit college and having thousands of workfare employees do the work once done by higher-paid city workers.

The parade consisted of members of more than 100 unions, including steamfitters, asbestos workers, theatrical stage employees and even some of the city's 35,000 workfare employees.

As you reported, the Transit Authority and Local 100 Transport Workers Union agreement promises no layoffs and that some workfare employees will be hired for permanent union jobs.

These leaders contend that it is also important to attract these workers to unions because, in their view, state and city governments are using workfare employees to replace higher-paid union workers.

One of the most common jobs for workfare employees is cleaning parks.