[NYAPRS Enews] Cuomo, PEF Reach Deal Expected to Prevent 3, 500 Layoffs

[Harvey Rosenthal]

Union's Deal With Cuomo May Prevent 3,500 Layoffs

By THOMAS KAPLAN  NY Times  October 16, 2011

 

New York's second-largest union of state workers, seeking to avoid
thousands of layoffs that were set to begin this week, struck a
last-minute deal with the Cuomo administration on Sunday on a revised
package of wage and benefit concessions.

The agreement makes only minor changes to the labor contract that
members of the union, the Public Employees Federation, voted to reject
last month
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/nyregion/public-employees-federation-
rejects-albany-contract.html> . That result prompted Gov. Andrew M.
Cuomo
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/andrew_m_c
uomo/index.html?inline=nyt-per>  to order 3,500 layoffs, which he said
were necessary to achieve the same savings that the concessions would
have offered.

Mr. Cuomo said that if the agreement is approved by the union's
executive board, which will consider it on Monday, he will suspend the
layoffs, to allow time for the federation's 55,000 members to vote on
whether to ratify the revised contract.

The first of the layoffs, which would amount to the state's largest wave
of job cuts in two decades, were to take effect on Wednesday.

"I am confident that my administration has been more than reasonable and
fair," Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. "Simply put, the fate of the
members is in the union's hands. It's up to them."

The revised contract would last four years, instead of the five-year
period set out in the original agreement. Workers would still be
required to accept a three-year wage freeze, followed by a 2 percent
raise in the contract's final year, and they would have to pay a greater
share of their health insurance premiums.

The new deal also tinkers with the compensation for nine furlough days
that the contract would require over the next two years. Workers would
now be paid back at the end of the contract for all nine of the furlough
days, instead of only four of them, but they would also forgo $1,000 in
bonuses that were part of the original deal.

"The changes we were able to obtain under this revised agreement address
many of the concerns raised by our members," the president of the Public
Employees Federation, Kenneth Brynien, said in a statement.

He said approval from the union's rank-and-file would "demonstrate that
our members are willing to sacrifice to save the jobs of 3,496 of their
co-workers and preserve the level of service to taxpayers."

Mr. Cuomo, in August, won ratification of a labor agreement with the
largest union
<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/nyregion/new-york-reaches-deal-with-l
argest-public-employee-union.html>  of state workers, the 66,000-member
Civil Service Employees Association. But members of the federation last
month voted 54 percent to 46 percent to reject a virtually identical
contract, saying the concessions demanded were too harsh.

Some workers also complained that the layoff protections included in the
deal - Mr. Cuomo promised workers immunity from broad layoffs for two
years - were insufficient, though the union was unable to win any
changes to that language in its new agreement with the governor.

Mr. Cuomo, in his negotiations with the federation after the failed
vote, insisted that any revised agreement would have to produce the same
savings for the state as the original pact, projected at $75 million
this year. A spokesman for the governor said Sunday that the tweaks to
the deal would not diminish those savings.

A spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association said that, at
first glance, the union believed its agreement to be comparable to the
revised deal with the federation, and that it did not intend to seek new
negotiations with Mr. Cuomo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/nyregion/cuomos-deal-with-public-emplo
yees-federation-halts-layoffs.html?_r=1&sq=Cuomo&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted
=print

 

Cuomo, PEF Reach New Tentative Contract Agreement

By Dan Levy  WNYT  October 17, 2011

 ALBANY - Just when everyone thought nearly 3,500 state workers were
about to lose their jobs, there's a chance at redemption. Late Sunday
afternoon Gov. Cuomo's office, along with the Public Employees
Federation reached a new, tentative contract agreement that, if ratified
by the union membership, would give PEF a second chance to avoid
thousands of layoffs.

Recent weeks haven't exactly been the best of times for Peter Rea and
Susan Olsen, both state Department of Transportation employees and
members of PEF whose lives were greatly impacted when their union
brethren voted down a five-year contract last month.

"I got a notice that said my jobs was eliminated," said Peter Rea.

Because of his 26 years of service, Rea would have been moved to a lower
paying job, bumping others with less service out the door.

"Psychologically, what do you think that does for me?" Rea asked
rhetorically. "A major decrease in income and now I have to, by virtue
of my bump, put somebody out the door that I work with every day."

Olsen is one of the workers with less service who, before Sunday's
developments, would have been out the door after this coming Wednesday.

"I take my Ambien at night and I'm still not going to sleep," she said.
"Four hours of sleep you're constantly thinking 'How is my life going to
change? What am I going to do?'"

For the time being, everything is on hold. There's a new tentative
contract agreement -- four years instead of five, with no pay raises the
first three years and a two percent bump the final year. Workers would
also get reimbursed at the end of the contract for nine furlough days.

"I know that this is not going to be a greatly enhanced contract but
we're hoping that some of the people that voted no the first time will
reconsider now that they have faces attached to what the layoffs are
going to entail," Rea said.

In a written statement, PEF President Ken Brynien said, "The
ratification of this agreement will demonstrate that our members are
willing to sacrifice to save the jobs of 3,496 of their coworkers and
preserve the level of service to taxpayers."

Meanwhile, Cuomo issued a statement on Sunday saying, "Simply put, the
fate of the members is in the union's hands. It's up to them."

Olsen says she thinks a lot of bad things will happen if the vote goes
down again.

"Not just to me and my family and Pete and his family, " she said, "I
think it's really bad for the union, you're going to lose all these
members and I think that's tragic."

Rea and Olsen say they'll be more aggressive this time around -- handing
out fliers and recruiting more volunteers to enhance their
get-out-the-vote message.

In addition, Rea has created a website <http://www.peffamilies.com/>
where union members can share their stories and their predicaments.

The PEF executive board meets at 1 p.m. Monday afternoon at the Desmond
Hotel in Colonie. If they approve the contract and if rank and file
ratify, no jobs will be lost.

The union vote needs to take place by Nov. 4.

http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S2331348.shtml?cat=300

 

 

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