HARTFORD — Five weeks after warning thousands of state employees could be laid off during the current Connecticut fiscal crisis, Gov. Dannel P. Malloythis week finally put the wheels in motion, giving formal notice to the 45,700 unionized state workers in 32 bargaining units.
Malloy has ordered department heads to report back to him, by next week, with cost-cutting ideas to tackle the current deficit in the state budget that is estimated as high as $266 million. Malloy offered his commissioners some suggestions, including $6 million in labor costs through layoffs, which must occur by the second week in June to realize the savings by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
But Republicans on Friday offered their own proposal: a two-day unpaid furlough program that would save $8 million and retain the generally high-paying full-time state jobs and benefits.
A Malloy spokesman called the Republican idea “a false choice.”
“I think this is an example of the powerless being subjected to the powerful,” said Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven. “If state employees were given the opportunity, I think they’d be willing to take two days off, without pay, and you could save the layoff notices for 2016. So there’s no reason for us to have layoffs in 2016. Just two days without pay yields you $8 million.”
Fasano said that prison guards, State Police, the Department of Children and Families and other core services would not be affected by the furloughs.
“What this does is it allows us not to take 1,000 people, generally people who joined state service relatively early, and tell them they no longer have a job,” he told reporters in a surprise early afternoon news conference in the Capitol.
The proposal includes bringing employees back to the bargaining table to renegotiate benefits that currently run until 2022, in order to save more than $100 million in the budget that starts July 1, including higher insurance co-pays for union workers.
State employee unions, most of which negotiate wages and benefits under the banner of the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) are opposed to the layoffs, stressing that high-earning state residents should help the budget shortfall by paying more taxes. A union leader responded Friday that Republicans helped bring the state into its current financial mess and that the GOP proposal is a stealthy attempt to reopen contracts.
“The layoffs are, of course, a terrible idea, and Republican leaders are among those who caused the budget problem by their stubborn refusal to ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share,” said Cindy Stretch, a Southern Connecticut State University English professor covered by the SEBAC agreement. “What they claim is a furlough day proposal is actually a Trojan Horse proposal that calls for reopening the SEBAC agreement plus pay cuts, which Republicans euphemistically call furlough days. And by offering no job security, this proposal would allow layoffs to go forward.
“The governor’s proposed layoffs and millions of dollars in cuts to public services will have a terrible impact on real human lives in the public and private sector, and threaten the well-being of our communities and the health of our economy,” said Stretch, the president of the SCSU chapter of theAmerican Association of University Professors. “But disingenuous political grandstanding by the defenders of the richest 1 percent only makes things worse.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, said the state has to balance its budget and the unions need to help.
“The reality is that state workers and the administration need to enter negotiations and make modest adjustments to our union contracts that will result in significant, immediate and long-term savings while preserving critical services and reducing the need for layoffs in the spirit of the agreement reached in 2011,” Looney said in a statement.
Christopher McClure, a spokesman for Malloy, said Friday that the governor announced in his February budget address that state employees need to be part of the discussion on cost savings. Currently, SEBAC is negotiating salaries with Malloy’s staff for contracts that expire this year.
“If state employees are ready to open that contract and offer ideas for savings, we welcome that discussion and stand ready to meet them at the bargaining table,” McClure said. “One area where we disagree with Senator Fasano — claiming that layoffs can be avoided by opening SEBAC, is a false choice.”
Layoff Warning Notices Sent To 45,700 State Of Connecticut Workers…..
….and as soon as they’re gone, Connecticut state government will run a lot more smoothly. Just put ’em all on welfare, because it’s no different than government employment.