Malloy, Unions: It's a Deal! [VIDEO]

Dozens and dozens of union members crowded into a union hall in Hartford Thursday afternoon to announce an agreement with Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on a concession package to plug a $1.6 billion budget deficit. The agreement avoids massive layoffs and facility closings, which the administration said would also protect the state’s middle- class workforce and preserve collective bargaining rights.

“Today’s vote is a victory for all of us. We as state employees stood together to maintain our collective bargaining rights,” said Roland Bishop, a teacher at the York Correctional Institution in Niantic and a member of the Connecticut State Employees Association. That union represents a wide range of public servants. “This was a much bigger fight and a larger picture than people thought in the beginning.”

Less than an hour after the agreement was announced, Malloy held a press conference at the state capitol. The contract “puts our relationship with state employees on a sustainable levee, he said. Malloy added it and would lead to $21.5 billion in additional savings over the next 20 years.

“But for this agreement, come 2017 there would have been hell to pay,” Malloy said of the situation that would have resulted if the state employees did not agree to the concession package. As the contract deadline neared, Malloy was forced to send thousands of layoffs notices and plan for facility closings.

The agreement provides the state’s more than 46,000 union workers the guarantee of no layoffs for the next four years in exchange for a salary freeze under the first two years of the deal. It also includes a restructuring of employee health care and pension benefits.

Kathy Fischer, the associate director of the University of Connecticut’s Women’s Center and a member of UConn’s Professional Employees Association, said the agreement was her third wage freeze or giveback in the past eight years, and that even though it had taken a toll on her family, as a single mother she was still grateful to have a secure job at a decent wage with affordable health care.  

“It’s taken a toll, but collective bargaining is a basic civil right that is extremely important,” Fischer said. “Individuals don’t have the same power, and so preserving that and preserving jobs, having health care, is the priority.”

In a statement released immediately after the agreement was announced, Malloy said that although the road to the concession agreement might have taken longer than expected, and contained more than its fair share of speed bumps and anxiety, the important thing was the state had reached an agreement with its workforce that would lead to considerable savings over an extended period of time.

“Those extra months are a small price to pay for the billions of dollars that extra time will save taxpayers, the critical services that time will preserve, and the peace of mind that comes from understanding the state now has a sustainable relationship with its employee base,” Malloy said. “…We have achieved something the skeptics said was unachievable: we’ve made the relationship between the state and its workforce sustainable. And, unlike in most other states, we did it without going to war with public employees.”

Jordyn O’Donovan, an employee of the social services fraud investigator division at the state’s Department of Social Services in Hartford who was slated to lose her job next week had the agreement not been ratified, said she was relieved that a deal had been reached, not just because it allows her to keep her job but because it also preserves pension and retiree benefits that thousands of state employees depend on, not to mention the unions' ability to collectively bargain for future rights.

“If this (agreement) had gotten voted down and it stayed voted down then collective bargaining is going to be on the table, as well as a lot of other things, and we weren’t going to have any love for us from the legislature or the public,” O’Donovan said. “It certainly would have changed state employment.”  

Editor's note: A full description of the changes to employees health care and pension benefits is attached as a PDF to this article).