Gov. Dannel Malloy, Connecticut (D)
Want a quick and simple summary of what's going on in Connecticut? Sorry, no can do. Not only is the situation changing by the hour, but it's really murky in terms of who the good guys and bad guys are. But here's as good a summary as you'll see, written by one of our local political reporters,
Mark Pazniokas:
The House Democratic majority and the administration of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy agreed Thursday to spare municipalities from proposed cuts in state aid, a change that will come at the expense of additional layoffs of state employees if a failed concession deal is not salvaged.
The Democratic majority in the House refused to grant Malloy's request for authority to cut municipal aid by 2 percent, so Malloy instead says he will impose as many as 1,000 layoffs above the 5,500 previously announced.
But the legislators are gambling that SEBAC, the coalition of state employee unions, can deliver on its promise to salvage concessions voted down last week in voting by individual unions. SEBAC's board has delayed indefinitely what was expected to be a pro forma acceptance of those votes.
"Our hope is that we don't do any of these cuts, and that the state employees eventually ratify the agreement and avert all layoffs and avert all cuts. That's our number one hope," said House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden.
Built into the plan is the ability to revisit and rescind layoffs if SEBAC (the negotiating coalition for the unions) reconsiders by end of summer. Keep in mind 57% of union members voted to accept the governor's proposal.
For some background as to how we got here, see Beneath Connecticut’s Image of Affluence, Deep Fiscal Pain, in which you can find this summary:
Fred V. Carstensen, director of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at the University of Connecticut, said the state faced two major, interrelated problems.
The first is fiscal. Due in large part to a 20-year labor agreement negotiated by Gov. John G. Rowland in 1997, Connecticut has been locked into an increasingly untenable relationship with its employees. Under that contract, the state is obligated to pay 10 times as much for employee pension costs as workers do — the second-highest ratio among the 10 largest state pension systems, after Florida. But it has not been paying what it owes into the pension system. A 2010 report said Connecticut had the second-highest unfunded pension liability per capita in the country, after Alaska, at more than $4,500 per resident.
The second problem is an abysmal level of job creation and economic growth that has left the state with fewer workers employed now than in 1987.
That's important background: you can't fix a pension problem going on 20 years with a quick fix. Government workers often have traded better pensions for lower wages, so this isn't greed. We addressed a bit of this in
last week's interview with Gov. Malloy.
Here's a quick summary of the rejected proposal:
The labor unions face their own challenges. In AFSCME, at least, the union's leaders are at odds with the rank-and-file, who rejected a strong recommendation to accept a deal that would have guaranteed job security for four years and health benefits through 2022.
Workers were asked to accept a two-year wage freeze, with annual raises of 3 percent to come in the third, fourth and fifth years of the deal. And some workers a decade a way from retirement would have had to work longer or settle for a smaller pension.
State employees currently need to reach age 60 with 25 years of service, or 62 with 10 years, to qualify for normal retirement benefits. Those conditions would have jumped to age 63 with 25 years or age 65 with 10 years for any current workers who plan to retire after July 1, 2022.
And the penalty for workers who want to retire early would have gotten steeper. Workers' pensions would have been reduced 6 percent, rather than the current reduction rate of 3 percent, for each year they leave state service early.
The retirement changes and a shift to an enhanced health plan that was projected to save the state money by requiring checkups and other standards of preventive care drew the most questions and opposition, union leaders say.
In fact, there's been a lot of misconception and misinformation, some of which is the cause of bleeding public support for the unions. See
here:
Many workers, he said, were convinced the new program was Sustinet, a proposed universal health care concept that has been discussed by lawmakers for years but has not become law. Other members, Pepe said, were mistakenly convinced they would not be able to use their current doctors.
and especially
here:
At the same time, a key union official for correction officers at the Cheshire prison said Monday that the proposed changes in the health care plan were the main reason state employees rejected the concessions deal with Malloy. Moises Padilla, vice president of AFSCME Local 387 at the Cheshire correctional complex, said he had predicted early on that the deal would be shot down, but no one listened to him.
Padilla said in an interview and in a statement that the primary reason for the defeat was that union members believed that Malloy and the union leadership "attempted to insert a social experiment, the enhanced health care plan, into a collective bargaining agreement in the hopes that it would eventually lead to universal health care, otherwise known as Obamacare or SustiNet, in our state.''
Feeling supportive of that guy yet? Again, there's a difference here between union leadership and a minority of union membership, even within the context of most members voting yes.
So the situation seems to be that there's pressure on SEBAC to revisit the vote and their rules (which require 80% approval and 14 of 15 unions, rules that make the US Senate look functional in comparison, and see below) within the confines of preserving collective bargaining (which is why CT is not WI or NJ). From Pazniokas:
{State Senate Majority leader] Donovan said the tentative agreement struck by the Malloy Administration and SEBAC leadership preserves jobs and saves the state money now through a two-year wage freeze and for decades through health and pension changes.
"It's a good, fair deal, and the majority of the SEBAC union voted for it. I just see that there's a deal there," Donovan said.
And in the end, maybe there will be. From
Greenwich Patch:
Meanwhile, state union leaders have stopped just short of calling the concession package officially dead, as Matt O’Connor, a spokesman for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, told Patch earlier this week that union leaders were still “hopeful that we can reach a quick resolution.”
Malloy said that state unions could still avoid the wholesale layoffs by ratifying his original agreement – but cautioned that time to do so was running short.
“If they choose to ratify the agreement that was recently turned down, and if they do so in a timely fashion, much of the pain that’s been inflicted over the past few days can be reversed,” Malloy said. “If they end up not ratifying the agreement, then the budget we now have in place is the one we’ll live with for the next two years.”
And then again, the latest says
maybe not:
There will be no controversial revote. State employees' union leaders decided Friday that they would not tamper with the decision by rank-and-file union members who rejected a savings and concessions deal with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.
And from Friday's Connecticut Post:
The union representing Connecticut State Police, one of four to reject a $1.6 billion concessions package, has asked Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration to engage in separate talks for givebacks.
The request comes as leaders of the 15-union State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition continue to search for a way to salvage the giveback deal and avoid thousands of layoffs over the summer. One labor source said SEBAC leadership may change its bylaws to allow the 26 of 34 bargaining units that supported the health care and pension givebacks to accept them, leaving the eight in opposition operating under the status quo.
But, the source noted, SEBAC leaders would be unable to act on any proposed rule changes until 30 days from their being put on the table. And Malloy on Thursday set a deadline of Aug. 31 for SEBAC to ratify the concessions.
Stay tuned for more... layoffs are on the table (in case anyone thought otherwise), but whether they happen or not is still to be determined. And while health benefits were spoken about in public, there's plenty of talk behind the scenes of other issues such as seniority driving "no" votes while newer members voted yes. But one thing is clear... sympathy for the union position from Democratic legislators, and from the voting public, is currently in short supply, even as union leaders, who were supportive of the original proposal, continue to work on a deal.
Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven, pleaded with union members to reach a deal. She said lawmakers didn't want to impose far-reaching cuts and layoffs, but had little choice but to grant Malloy the expanded budget-cutting authority.
"We will do it this way if we have to, but I say to you there is a better way," she said.
And then there's
this:
Michael Merrill, dean of the Harry Van Arsdale Jr. Center for Labor Studies at Empire State College in New York, said he did not have an issue with SEBAC considering bylaw changes to allow the concessions to move forward.
"Why should the minority determine the outcome?" he said. Merrill said SEBAC needs to prove to anti-union Republican governors like New Jersey's Chris Christie that Malloy's efforts to collaborate with labor are not a failure.
"If the Connecticut model doesn't work, the advocates of the New Jersey model are going to crow," Merrill said.
The last thing Connecticut needs is New Jersey giving advice on how to get along with unions.
The final word is from Rick Green of the Hartford Courant (taking the pulse of the public at Sears):
So listen up, unionist no-voters, Democrats, Republicans and Gov. Malloy. It's a mess and the pits, ghastly and ridiculous. Folks out there didn't like the way that concession vote went down. A lot of them want smaller government. Nobody's crazy about layoffs. They want an assertive governor who makes real changes in Connecticut's economy.
There you have it, direct from the Sears parking lot.