Matt O’Connor, a spokesman for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, this afternoon said he is confident that in the coming days and weeks the group’s 15 union leaders will find a way to ratify a concessions package worth $1.6 billion.
Sources say union heads are meeting at an undisclosed location all day tomorrow.
The General Assembly is in special session today to help Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy deal with the $1.6 billion hole left in their budget when the unions shot down the concessions package last weekend.
Malloy is moving ahead with thousands of layoffs and expected to be granted authority to enact deep budget cuts.
The Senate today is also debating a bill, pursued by Malloy, intended to implement some of the salary and pension reforms that had been part of the SEBAC givebacks.
The unions are against the move, arguing those issues should be left to the collective bargaining process.
O’Connor said ultimately none of those actions will be needed.
“We are confident we’re going to come up with a resolution,” O’Connor said. “We’re going to find a way to save the state $1.6 billion.”
House Speaker Chris Donovan, D-Meriden, a longtime ally of organized labor, is giving the unions some breathing room. He just confirmed to reporters rumors the House will not be taking up the salary and pension reforms today. That does not mean they go away. They are just in limbo awaiting a House vote.
“We don’t need to take them up today,” Donovan said. “If there’s no agreement we may be dealing with those issues.”
Asked if the reforms were being used to pressure SEBAC into finding some way to push the $1.6 billion worth of givebacks through, Donovan said, “I would think state employees would take notice that the bill is alive and on our calendar.”
Roy Occhiogrosso, Malloy’s chief advisor, said it is House leadership’s prerogative to move ahead or not with the salary and pension reforms.
“The governor supports the bill, thinks it’s an issue whose time has come,” he said.
Asked if Malloy put the changes on the table to put pressure on SEBAC, Occhiogrosso said, “Everybody tries to read into everything you do around here.”
“The governor’s been talking about long term structural reform since the campaign … The SEBAC agreement put us on that road. Once that was tabled, he wanted to revisit the issue.”
Malloy is a clown, and why isn’t Occhiogrosso giving back his longevity check. What a bunch of Hypocrates. they take care of their own, where are the upper management cuts that Malloy promised?
I think it’s going to be a lot harder to do that than they think. Once thousands of workers go in tomorrow they are going to be earning more per hour per the contract in effect. I think they will find a large and somewhat persuasive legal challenge awaiting them because of due process.
1) Those thousands of employees have a vested property right in those wages earned at a higher rate, they cannot just be given away after the fact back to the state without consent and/or some judicial review.
2) Not to mention the tax implications of earning more money, realizing that gain on paper, never getting to use the additional money, then getting taxed on it?
3) The TA would need to be completely re-written. It has specific dates that trigger certain events. Under TA, no employee is supposed to get any increase for 2011-12 fiscal year, however, that will not be the case starting tomorrow morning.
I do not see an easy way to salvage this TA at all.