Could the preliminary contract agreement worked out between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the members of Council 82 prompt a rush for the exits?

One provision of the deal — which will be voted on by members next month — calls for a reduction of the amount of accrued sick time that can be applied to the cost of health insurance after an employee retires. The change would reduce the maximum sick time eligible from today’s 1,400 hours to 400 hours.

The amount of savings a worker might derive from the use of sick time would depend on several factors, but the potential financial loss from the reduction of the benefit would fall more heavily on older workers who have the greater amount of accrued sick time.

It would be what you might call a negative retirement incentive.

“I never thought of it that way, but you’re right,” said Dick Stevens, Council 82’s staff director, who said the union has received many questions about that aspect of the deal.

“If there’s a rationale to (the reduction in sick time use), that’s probably it,” said E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative watchdog group. McMahon, who favors many elements of the proposed three-year contract, said he was surprised to see such a significant reduction included in the deal.

“It penalizes the people who have worked the longest,” McMahon said.

This reduction — which would save the state an estimated $45 million — doesn’t come with a separate effective date (“We’ve been asked that question 100 times,” said Stevens) and doesn’t appear to require legislative approval. The provision would likely go into effect soon after the contract is ratified by members.

The Department of Environmental Conservation said 37 members of Council 82, which represents conservation officers within the agency, had filed their retirement papers in recent weeks. A spokeswoman described it as a “pretty significant” uptick.

But SUNY administration, which employs Council 82 members as campus police, reported no similar increase.

There are other reasons why Council 82 members may be filing for retirement just as the agreement is announced: In addition to reducing benefits, it comes with a chunky retroactive payment of raises that the membership has gone without since 2005.

The deal also comes with a three-year salary freeze, two years without “step increases,” and numerous added health care costs for members.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has signaled it’s unwilling to offer state employees the more familiar types of retirement incentives, which often involve sweeteners such as a reduction in the required period of service or even a cash bonus.

Cuomo has made it similarly clear that he thinks the Council 82 deal should serve as a model for ongoing negotiations with the two largest public employees unions, PEF and CSEA. The recently enacted state budget calls for $450 million in workforce savings to be achieved through negotiations with public employee unions.

The governor went so far as to note if Council 82’s deal was extended to the 120,000 members of the two unions, the savings would end the threat of up to 9,800 layoffs that’s been mentioned as a last resort.

The unions reacted to news of the Council 82 deal by noting the union is tiny in comparison to CSEA and PEF, and ascribing its leaders’ willingness to take the significant givebacks contained in the deal to the fact that the law enforcement union has been without a contract for six years.

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