Thomas MacMillan File Photo
State labor leaders “did a terrible job” of selling members on a job-saving deal with the governor, in Jacqueline James-Evans’ view. Now her state agency will deal with the fallout — as will her city, whose mayor has directed his staff to plan for up to a $10 million hit.
As both a state worker and city lawmaker, James-Evans (pictured) has a unique perspective on the collapse of a union concession deal that Friday sent government workers and officials scrambling to plan for a projected 7,500 state government layoffs and untold state cutbacks to already budget-strapped cities like New Haven.
James-Evans — who voted yes — and workers who voted no spoke out Friday about the collapse of a deal that seemed to spare cities like New Haven from the state-directed budget pain afflicting cities elsewhere around the country. Reasons ranged from a failure of union leadership to rank-and-file concern over giving up benefits in tough times, even if that means colleagues lose their jobs.
New Haven Mayor John DeStefano met with alderman and local union officials, then raced up to Hartford Friday for a preview of the bad news to come in a chat with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. DeStefano instructed his staff to prepare a set of “options” for closing a $10 million sudden budget gap — in case one that big opens up.
The scrambling followed news that state workers failed to ratify a deal their union leaders had struck with Gov. Malloy for an alleged $1.6 billion in union givebacks and savings over two years. Now Malloy is proceeding with “Plan B”: Laying off around 7,500 workers (some 15 percent of the force, to take effect Sept. 1) and making other dramatic cuts to state agencies in order to balance Connecticut’s two-year $40.1 billion budget.
Even pro-union pundits expressed disbelief at the union rejection. (Sample take: “Unions Walk Off A Cliff.”)
Or as a headline put it on the Ct Capitol Report site, referencing New Jersey’s and Connecticut’s governors:
“Christie stuffs unions in New Jersey
Unions stuff Malloy in Connecticut”
The true value of those union “givebacks” may have been overestimated. (They included “savings” from unspecified worker suggestions and dollar estimates on savings from preventive care.) The deal — and the legislative session itself, including a first-in-the-nation paid sick days law — still was seen nationally as one-of-a-kind victory for labor amid a recession that has devastated government budgets and led to widespread calls for layoffs and recession or cancellation of expensive pension and health plans — and even historic reversals of unions’ basic rights to bargain. (Check out Wisconsin and New Jersey.) Malloy was seen as the one governor willing to raise taxes on the wealthy and to avoid bashing unions, making drastic safety-net cuts, or eliminating any jobs in return for modest long-term benefit concessions. And state union leaders tried hard to convince their members to ratify the deal.
The deal would have guaranteed state workers’ jobs for four years; frozen their wages for two years, followed by three annual 3 percent raises; promised no furloughs; shaved cost-of-living increases for pensions and raised the retirement age by two years for those retiring after 2022; eliminated one of two longevity bonuses; and instituted new $35 co-pays for emergency room visits. (One employee used the emergency room 150 times in one year, according to the unions.)
That sounded like the right deal to Alderwoman James-Evans, who works as an investigator with the state Department of Children and Families and has been a member of AFSCME Local 2663 for the past 14 years.
But it sounded like a bad deal to enough of her AFSCME colleagues that that union voted 6,781 to 5,547 to reject it. That was enough of a margin to doom the entire deal; AFSCME is the largest of 15 unions in the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), which has rules requiring an 80 percent overall vote to OK the package. (Scroll to the bottom of this story for a union-by-union tally.)
One theory given for the defeat: Even though a devastating 15 percent or more of the workforce faces losing jobs, that leaves a majority that won’t lose jobs — and therefore voted to protect their benefits instead of their colleagues’ jobs. In other words, selfishness.
However, while no one knows who’ll get pink slips from the governor in the coming week, James-Evans has 14 years on the job, making her an unlikely target. She said she voted for the deal because it was “fair” and “I don’t want to see people laid off.”
“We’ve done a big hire over the last five years. A lot of my co-workers will be affected,” she said.
Even more, James-Evans expressed concerns about “risking the safety of our children.” DCF has already been under the gun for not following up on cases enough. Now workers’ caseloads will probably grow in the wake of cuts.
So what happened?
“Just in speaking to different people,” James-Evans said, she found people left with unanswered questions from union brass. “I think the communication wasn’t there. The union did a terrible job communicating with their members. It was a big, big issue. They didn’t make the investment in communicating with folks.”
Indeed, misconceptions about the deal spread like wildfire among the rank and file, with tales of “Obamacare” “nanny state” provisions forcing workers to switch doctors, penalizing them for smoking or being fat, or denying emergency care, for instance. The plan required them to sign a form saying they’d undergo annual physicals (or face new deductible and higher premiums) and twice-annual free dental cleanings. It also required most workers at some point to have colonoscopies or mammograms absent compelling reasons not to, and to visit primary care centers rather than emergency rooms if the option exists.
AFSCME spokesman Larry Dorman blamed “outside influences” for spreading misinformation. “There have been hundreds of informational meetings, videos, and question-and-answer sessions” to explain the deal, he said in an interview.
Some DCF colleagues also didn’t want to forgo raises at a time when state taxes are also rising, James-Evans said.
Workers outside New Haven’s downtown state courthouses Friday preferred not to give their names, but were happy to explain why they voted no on the deal.
“I voted no basically because of the medical,” said one, a member of AFSME Local 749. He said he already pays $500 per month for health insurance for his family. He said he didn’t have enough information about the proposed health care plan to trust that he wouldn’t lose benefits.
He said his union already gave seven furlough days under former Gov. M. Jodi Rell. “We weren’t afraid to give back something” more, he said, but “there was just so much” he was willing to give up.
A state judicial marshal turned in his ballot Thursday as part of the National Brotherhood of Police Officers Local 731, whose votes have not yet been tallied.
“I voted it down,” he said. He said he already gave up a pay raise in concessions under Gov. Rell. A self-described “diehard Democrat,” he supported Malloy in his election for governor. Now he feels the new governor is trying to balance the budget on the backs of the working class, he said.
“They go after the working [class] people,” he said, while judges are allowed to retire with a pension, then return to get $225 per day “to just sit up on the 9th floor and drink coffee.”
Another state judicial marshal also voted “no” on the proposal. She said she didn’t have much information about the labor deal, but “it seemed like the right thing to do.” She said there was a “consensus” among coworkers to vote no.
Workers at the state Department of Social Services (DSS) office in New Haven, who are represented by AFSCME Local 714, were all over the map on the deal.
An older worker predicted that Malloy and union leaders will come back to the negotiating table and work something out. “We helped get him in there. That’s why,” the employee said.
Another worker, who has been with the state for five years, said the biggest split is between senior employees and newer hires like her. The junior workers are more cognizant that times are hard in the private sector, she said, and are more likely to be willing to accept less from the state. Many older employees, by contrast, “they’re in their comfort zone, and change is not a good thing.”
“Let’s just say this: you have performers and non-performers,” she said. “There’s a good chance the performers are going to be let go” because they haven’t been around as long. The more senior workers “don’t think they’ll be touched” by layoffs.
But another relatively junior employee — she’s worked at DSS for four years — said she voted against the deal because it asked for too much. She said she was also bothered by the negotiations, which she said weren’t open enough for the rank-and-file to understand what was happening. She said she believes that the health proposal took too much autonomy away from workers. She said it’s time for the unions to stand up to the state, which always comes asking for concessions because the perception is that workers will say yes to anything.
Still, she acknowledged, “the public is going to be seriously affected, because we’re already short as it is. I don’t know what is going to happen if we lose more staff.”
New Haven Prepares
Christine Stuart Photo
DeStefano and other mayors with Malloy at the Capitol Friday.
Meanwhile, at New Haven City Hall, disaster planning commenced. The DeStefano administration has already laid off 82 workers this year; it is embroiled in contentious negotiations with municipal unions over proposed health care and pension givebacks.
Mayor DeStefano convened union leaders in his office Thursday afternoon to warn that a big new hole may appear in the budget with the collapse of the state labor deal. He said he has no hard figures yet.
“Right now I’m shadow-boxing,” DeStefano said later.
“The goal [of the meeting] was to bring them up to speed of what I knew. We ought to be talking to each other a lot. They ought to be talking to their members. It’s creating an environment where we are mutually dependent on each other.”
“It’s going to trickle down” from Hartford, AFSCME Local 3144 President Cherlyn Poindexter said. “How can it not affect everybody else?”
The mayor held a similar heads-up meeting with around 10 aldermen Friday morning. While repeating that he has no dollar estimates yet of newly lost revenue, he told them about this request for staff to come up with the $10 million in “options.”
“It’s a little scary,” said East Rock Alderman Matt Smith. “The consequences of slashing municipal aid are concerning. We already have what essentially amounts to an $8 million budget hole from the union concessions that were written as separate line items into the budget. The possibility that we could face as much as another $10 million could have dramatic ramifications in terms of what we can offer in terms of city services to people.”
Board of Aldermen President Carl Goldfield called city workers “the dominoes in the chain. … This is the state workers kicking the problem down to the local level.” He said that because the city budget lacks discretionary spending, the only way to cover any new gap will be through the workforce.
After that meeting DeStefano drove to the state Capitol for a powwow with Malloy. He and the mayors of Connecticut’s four other largest cities had requested the meeting to discuss what the torpedoed labor agreement will mean for their budgets.
Malloy didn’t have any figures to offer. But he did tell the mayors to expect more of the pain to come in the second year of the new budget and a relatively modest cut the first year. DeStefano said the mayors gave Malloy, a former Stamford hizzoner, this message: “You’ve been great on municipal aid and on supporting central cities. This has been helpful to us.”
They also talked about the SEBAC rules that enable a majority of union workers to approve a deal — as they did in this case — only to see it fail because of falling below the 80 percent threshold.
“A minority can determine a direction. It’s kind of a crazy system,” DeStefano said.
He repeated that sentiment at a subsequent press conference alongside Malloy. Click here to read Christine Stuart’s report on that press conference and on Malloy’s next moves with the legislature and the workforce. And click here to read Stuart’s report on labor’s post-mortem.
""Let's just say this: you have performers and non-performers," she said. "There's a good chance the performers are going to be let go" because they haven't been around as long. The more senior times "don't think they'll be touched" by layoffs."
Sounds like a 100% cut is needed, not a 15% cut.
The suburban fat-cat unions are now doomed, both at a local and state level. Hopefully Malloy will emerge as a moderate hero to the state, and start searching for private companies willing to operate the services that will be eliminated.
If the unions actually care about working people, they will issue a release calling for even more layoffs of top-heavy state departments in order to preserve municipal aid levels. Cities have nothing to do with this failure.
Unfortunately, the union leadership is rich and lives in gated suburban subdivisions, so will never do something like that. Unless, perhaps, the big city CT mayors get together and play a little hardball with them.