HAYWARD -- In a cost-cutting move that officials called a "very painful" decision," California State University, Hayward, delivered letters to 61 nonteaching employees Friday, informing them that their positions will be eliminated this summer.

"Similar cuts have been happening this week at all 23 schools in the state university system," university spokesman Kim Huggett said. "It's a sad day."

When the layoffs occur -- in most cases they will take effect on June 30 -- they will be the fourth round of cuts to CSUH employees in two years, Huggett said.

"For some, they will take effect on July 15," he said.

The timing of the pending layoff notices was chosen to comply with timelines stipulated in contracts with employees' various bargaining units, according to school officials.

Dick Metz, the university's vice president of administration and business affairs, said Friday's layoff letters didn't affect any faculty positions. Rather, jobs were cut from departments "from all over the campus," Metz said, including groundskeeping, housekeeping, secretarial pools, admissions operations and laboratories.

Metz said estimates of budget savings likely will not be firm until sometime in June, when the details of both the layoffs and the state budget become clearer.

Depending on their respective union bargaining units, some employees might have "retreat rights," which allow some to take a lesser position somewhere in the university, Metz said. "If the budget picture gets better, then we'll certainly do our best to rescind as many of these notifications of pending layoffs as possible."

University officials were unsure Friday just how much money the possible layoffs will trim from the budget.

"We hope to save millions in salaries," Huggett said. "But we still don't know how deep the cuts will be until after the 'May revise,' when the Legislature acts on the state's budgets for 2004-05."

Metz said that university administrators have worked since January to prepare budgets that called for cuts between 8.5 percent and 15 percent. Friday's notices of pending layoffs would slash costs somewhere between those two figures.

An 8.5 percent cut amounts to a $7.1 million budget reduction, school officials said.

"What we think we're doing is planning for a worst-case scenario, and we hope the case gets better," Metz said. "It is certainly action the university takes with a heavy heart."