Union execs OK deal with Cuomo

Thousands of imminent layoffs of state workers were postponed Monday after the Public Employees Federation leadership accepted a new contract to submit to a member vote.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered the 3,496 layoffs that were to take effect Wednesday after union members rejected a contract last month. The union's executive board approved a revised contract Monday in Albany that had been finalized with Cuomo's office on Sunday.

"It's an equitable agreement," PEF president Ken Brynien said following the board vote. "We are urging our membership to approve it."

The new contract is expected to be sent to members Tuesday or Wednesday; they must vote on it by Nov. 3. Though the first contract was similar to one approved in August by the larger Civil Service Employees Association, members of PEF, which represents 56,000 white-collar workers, had different concerns.

Like the rejected contract, the revision keeps three years of salary freezes, furloughs and increased employee health care costs. Some differences are that workers can be reimbursed for the furlough days so that won't affect final average salaries that are used to calculate pension, and vacation days can be used to offset increased health care costs. The new contract also covers fewer years -- four rather than five.

The new contract does not promise that there will be no layoffs in the future, but Brynien said the language of the agreement says "for this year and next year, the conditions that led to the financial problems the state is having now will not be a cause for layoffs."

Cuomo said that a no-layoff agreement would have taken away the state's flexibility to deal with fiscal issues.

"With this economy who knows what next year will bring, so you can't say anything," Cuomo said. "I can't say anything with finality about layoffs."

It was unclear Monday how much savings the new contract would produce. Cuomo said the contract could be tweaked as long as the savings remained the same. The concessions were supposed to save $400 million over five years, including $75 million in savings as part of this year's adopted budget that closed a $10-billion deficit.

"The shorter contract length would affect the total savings," Morris Peters, spokesman for the Division of Budget, wrote in an email. "That's even if years 1-4 are [revenue] neutral."

Cuomo said there won't be another round of negotiations if the union rejects the revised contract. "The layoffs will begin," he said. "It's now up to them."