State Employees’ Union Accepts Wage and Benefits Concessions
By THOMAS KAPLAN
Published: August 16, 2011
ALBANY — Members of New York’s largest union of state employees, in a begrudging acknowledgment of the increasingly hostile mood toward public workers, have agreed to accept major wage and benefits concessions sought by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
The union, the Civil Service Employees Association, announced late Monday night that its members had voted by about 60 percent to 40 percent to approve the contract agreement that the governor and union leaders struck in June.
The ratification was a critical victory for Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat whose plan to close the state’s budget gap relied in large part on a bet that state employees would be willing to stomach a freeze on wages and an increase in the cost of health benefits in return for safeguarding their jobs.
The union’s president, Danny Donohue, said in a statement: “These are not ordinary times, and C.S.E.A. worked hard to reach an agreement that we believed would be in everyone’s best interest. C.S.E.A. members agree that this contract is reasonable and responsible for the long term and shows that C.S.E.A. members will do what is right for the good of all New Yorkers.”
Savings from the five-year contract are expected to total $73 million this fiscal year, part of the $450 million in cuts that Mr. Cuomo’s budget counted on extracting from the state work force. And the governor’s office projected that if other unions agreed to the same terms total savings for the state would amount to $1.6 billion over five years.
Beyond the savings, the ratification also goes a long way toward validating Mr. Cuomo’s strategy
for dealing with public workers, tens of thousands more of whom will vote as early as next month on whether to agree to their own concessions.
In labor negotiations, the governor took a firm stance. He demanded significant financial concessions and was not shy about threatening layoffs to gain leverage.
At the same time, he did not attack collective bargaining or speak about the unions with any kind of hostility, unlike some other governors seeking to cut work-force costs, like Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Chris Christie in New Jersey.
“This is a big, big win — a win for the union and a win for the people of the state,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “The union avoided layoffs, and the state is financially stronger. I’m pleased that our approach of labor and management working together is vindicated.”
The announcement, made shortly before midnight, capped a day of suspense at the Capitol. Union leaders worked more than 12 hours counting paper ballots that had been mailed in over the last month by union members, who, along with aides to Mr. Cuomo and other officials, spent the day wondering what the final tally would show.
Nearly 30,000 of the union’s 66,000 members voted.
The contract’s approval could encourage the state’s other major public-employee union, the Public Employees Federation, to approve its own, nearly identical deal with Mr. Cuomo when it is put to a vote next month. And it will bolster the governor’s case as he seeks concessions from other, smaller unions in coming months.
The workers’ willingness to accept the contract’s cuts could also provide Mr. Cuomo with some political relief.
As he urged workers to do their part in helping the state rein in spending, Mr. Cuomo found himself increasingly at odds with organized labor, a traditional ally for a Democratic chief executive.
No organized campaign emerged among members of the Civil Service Employees Association who were dissatisfied with the contract.
But its passage remained no certainty because of the scope of the proposed cuts. The agreement calls for a freeze on base wages for three years, followed by 2 percent annual raises in the contract’s last two years. The union’s last contract offered 3 percent raises for three years and a 4 percent raise in the final year.
Mr. Cuomo, mindful of the failure of other recent labor deals, also stopped short of avowing complete confidence that the Civil Service Employees Association’s members would sign off on the agreement.
His first labor deal, with a small union of law enforcement officers, was rejected in May, and in June public workers in Connecticut rejected their proposed contract, throwing that state’s budget into turmoil.
But in New York, the prospect of layoffs — Mr. Cuomo said he would have to eliminate as many as 9,800 jobs if workers refused to make concessions — appeared to frighten union members into accepting a contract they might in other years have considered unthinkable. The contract agreement protects union members from broad-based layoffs for two years, and union leaders focused their ratification pitch largely around that promise of job security during difficult financial times.
In fact, hundreds of workers were only days away from losing their jobs when the 56,000-member Public Employees Federation agreed to its deal with Mr. Cuomo last month, averting the impending layoffs. On Thursday, the union’s executive board approved the contract agreement, which will be sent to union members for consideration in September.
“There were no good choices,” the union’s president, Kenneth Brynien, wrote to members after the board’s vote. “In the past, contract negotiations achieved significant gains for our members. Unfortunately, the state of the economy, the will of the state’s political leaders and public sentiment have created an environment where the services our members provide are undervalued.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/nyregion/state-employees-union-accepts-wage-and-benefits-concessions.html?hp
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