Pat Dollard

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Hartford Courant:

HARTFORD — Union leaders announced this afternoon that state employees have voted to ratify a labor savings and concessions agreement that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has been counting on to bridge a $1.6 billion budget gap over the next two years, sources familiar with the voting said this morning.

Voting ended Wednesday. Approval of the deal comes as about 3,000 state employees had received layoff notices following the failure of the 45,000 unionized state employees to ratify essentially the same deal in June.

Spokesmen for the Malloy administration and State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, an umbrella group for the 15 unions representing about 45,000 state workers, refused to comment in advance of a 12:30 p.m. news conference in Hartford today – when SEBAC will disclose the vote totals as to how many of the 15 have approved it.

It is clear, however, that the ratification threshold has been more than met, the sources said.

The strong reversal from the corrections officers was part of a movement that led to ratification of the concessions deal by all of AFSCME, the largest of all the Connecticut state employee unions with about 16,000 total members; AFSCME had rejected it the first time.

Hammered out by the administration and union negotiators, the agreement calls for a two-year wage freeze as well as changes to health care and pension benefits. In exchange, the unions secured a four-year, no-layoff clause and a pledge they would not be required to take unpaid furlough days. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy says the changes would save the state an estimated $1.6 billion over the next two years and $21.5 billion over the next two decades.

If the agreement is not approved, Malloy has said he will have no choice but to lay off thousands of state workers and sharply cut services. His administration has already issued about 3,000 layoff notices, which loomed over the vote and may have convinced at least some members to support the concessions as a way of preserving the jobs.

Although union leaders hailed the deal as fair — and Republican lawmakers and many private sector workers saw it as overly generous — many unionized state employees disagreed. When a pact first came up for a vote earlier this summer, it failed to meet the threshold for passage. In the wake of that rejection, the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition tweaked its rules so that the agreement needed just a simple majority to pass, not 80 percent of those voting.

After the agreement was shot down, the Malloy administration and the unions also agreed to clarify certain aspects of the agreement, particularly those relating to the health care coverage.

SEBAC officials had blamed misinformation by outside forces, notably the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, a Hartford-based think tank with ties to Republican activists. However an investigation by Attorney General George Jepsen turned up no evidence that the institute had improperly tried to influence the union vote.

In advance of this second round of voting, SEBAC ramped up its outreach to union members, holding dozens of informational sessions and other events aimed at convincing state workers to back the deal.