HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The fate of thousands of Connecticut state employee jobs and a labor savings-and-concessions deal that's supposed to balance the $40.1 billion state budget appeared Wednesday to lie in the hands of one Department of Correction union local.
Larry Dorman, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 4, said about 1,850 corrections workers — the last of three corrections locals — are the final AFSCME members who've yet to vote on the tentative agreement. The other two already voted down the deal.
"If ASCME's aggregate vote counts as a no, that sinks the whole agreement," Dorman said, explaining that the votes will be counted by individual workers not by local.
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The General Assembly has already passed the two-year, $40.1 billion budget, counting on $1.6 billion in labor savings with passage of the tentative agreement. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has said there could be as many as 7,500 layoffs if the deal his administration reached with union leaders is not ratified.
For the agreement to pass, 14 of the 15 member unions of the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition must vote for it. Nine AFSCME bargaining units make up one member of the coalition, and one of the larger AFSCME units voted down the deal Tuesday, joining other AFSCME members who previously voted against it.
Dorman said the tally is currently leaning toward a no vote.
In addition, Ron McLellan of the Connecticut Employees Union Independent, Local 511 — also a member of the coalition — confirmed that the maintenance and service workers narrowly voted against the tentative agreement on Tuesday. That marked the first union member of the coalition to vote against the tentative agreement. The deal cannot pass if AFSCME also votes no.
As of late Wednesday, eight of the 15 coalition members had voted yes, according to union officials, and several still needed to wrap up their voting by Friday.
Union spokesmen called on the remaining state employees to keep voting, despite odds being against ratification.
"Thousands of state employees still have votes to cast and we intend and want to be very respectful of that process. It's far from over and we need to make sure that state employees turn out and vote. We're urging them to turn out and vote, not only to save their jobs and benefits, but to reject the campaigns of misinformation that have gone out," Dorman said. "And we want them to vote to do our part to help get us through this budget crisis."
Given that the AFSCME union encompasses about 30 percent of the state's unionized employees, the tentative deal could also fail without the AFSCME backing because of a weighted voting system that requires at least 80 percent of the vote be cast in favor of the provisions in order for them to pass.
Results of the correction local's balloting are expected to be disclosed Friday, when the last of some 45,000 unionized state employees, including state police and judicial marshals, are to finish voting.
Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration was continuing preparations Wednesday for the strong possibility that the agreement would not be ratified.
Malloy has asked his budget director, Benjamin Barnes, to continue working on a so-called "Plan B" to present to the General Assembly on how to close a $700 million to $800 million gap in the first year. Malloy has said as many as 7,500 layoffs could be necessary without the ratification. But his senior adviser, Roy Occhiogrosso, said the final layoff figure was still being determined.
"It's something that would be presented to the legislature, if the agreement fails, in a very timely fashion," Occhiogrosso said, adding that the governor would prefer to have the contingency plan approved by lawmakers in a special session before July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.
Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, D-New Haven, agreed it would be preferable to have a contingency plan approved by July 1, but didn't know if that would be possible or necessary.
Looney said if the deal is defeated, he hopes the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition would explore whether it's possible to take another vote, especially in unions where there were close tallies.
"I would hope that every opportunity would be explored. This was certainly a reasonable proposal that was offered to the state employees that they should accept," he said, adding how members could have had misunderstandings based on misinformation about the deal.
Union leaders have accused the Yankee Institute of trying to sabotage the ongoing vote, a charge the conservative think tank has strongly denied.
But Occhiogrosso said that if the deal fails, Malloy will not renegotiate with the state employee unions on a revised agreement.
"There is no other negotiation that can take place," he said.
Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said lawmakers must return to the state Capitol and vote on a revised budget, which by law must be balanced, before the new fiscal year begins.
"We have to balance it by July 1. There's no argument that we don't have to do that, there's no legitimate argument," said McKinney, who said the minority GOP warned the Democrats and Malloy "not to count their chickens before they hatched" and rely upon a yet-to-be-ratified union concession agreement to balance the budget.
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