Has the Paterson Administration just deprived itself of crucial leverage over the largest state employee unions during two challenging fiscal years ahead? It sure sounds that way, if the unions themselves are to be believed.
According to Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Local 1000, Friday’s deal includes this understanding:
The Paterson Administration is pledging that it will not pursue layoffs over the next two years as it seeks to gain savings and maintain services.
If the governor has, indeed, made a formal and binding pledge not to pursue layoffs, it may be a first. And it couldn’t come at a worse time. The state’s fiscal outlook for the next two years is bad, and deteriorating. The threat of layoffs is the only weapon a governor has to attempt to wring concessions from unions during a settled contract term. The current CSEA and PEF contracts expire at the end of fiscal 2010-11 — i.e., three months after the governor elected in 2010 takes office.
Would the supposed no-layoff pledge extend beyond that period? The answer won’t be clear until (unless?) the governor releases whatever understanding he and the unions put in writing.
So far, this much is clear: in exchange for a no-layoff pledge, a $20,000 good-bye bonus for 4,500 workers already eligible to retire, and an agreement to cooperate in seeking small “voluntary” work-hour reductions, the unions preserved their members’ 3 percent raises for this year and next, giving up … well, nothing affecting any current state employee.
The unions did agree to drop their political opposition to Paterson’s proposed “Tier V” plan modifying the existing defined-benefit pension plan for future employees. But as the Public Employee Federation (PEF) notes over at its website, “the Governor dropped a number of his demands from his original [pension] proposal.” Most significantly, instead of eliminating overtime from calculations, the agreed-upon Tier V plan will allow up to $10,000 of “discretionary” overtime — with no limit on “mandatory” overtime, which may be the largest share of overtime for many affected workers.
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