ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A five-year labor deal that would freeze wages for three years for 66,000 union members in New York but would avoid hundreds of layoffs was approved Monday night, the union and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's office announced.
About 30,000 ballots by members of the Civil Service Employees Association union were counted and certified Monday. No vote totals were disclosed but Cuomo said in a statement that the deal was "a win for the union and a win for the people of the state."
CSEA President Danny Donohue said in a statement that "These are not ordinary times and CSEA worked hard to reach an agreement that we believed would be in everyone's best interest."
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The agreement's terms take effect immediately since the legislature approved it contingent on the CSEA ratification.
The current state budget is counting hundreds of millions of dollars in concessions from all its unions, much of it from the CSEA, the state's largest union and one that represents many of the state's blue-collar workers. The concessions were part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's effort to address a $10 billion deficit in the budget adopted April 1.
Cuomo, a Democrat, has said repeatedly that if unions reject the deal, he would proceed with the nearly 1,000 layoffs he said would be needed to achieve savings of a similar amount in the concessions.
The deal would provide employees with lump-sum retention payments of $775 in 2013. A $225 payment would be made in 2014, and workers would get 2 percent pay increases in 2014 and 2015.
Workers also will have to take nine unpaid days off and pay more for their health insurance.
Another important vote is expected to be in September over a similar tentative contract with the Public Employees Federation, which represents many of the state's white-collar workers.
Cuomo's plan with all union contracts would cut workforce costs by $1.63 billion over the course of their agreements.
The Cuomo administration said the contracts would be $3.8 billion less expensive to the state than the contract agreements in 2007.
The state budget is about $132 billion.
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