State employee union leaders voted Monday to change their by-laws in a last-ditch effort to save the jobs of their members, according to a union web site.
The leaders had been meeting throughout the morning to consider whether to change their by-laws in order to allow a new vote on a revised deal between the Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the unions. If the unions agree to the new deal, the deep budget cuts proposed by Malloy would be largely avoided.
"It's good news that the unions have changed their ratification process to one that respects the will of the majority,'' Malloy said in a statement at about 2:30 p.m. Monday. "Over the next few days, Mark Ojakian will be speaking with SEBAC leaders to understand which issues in the agreement need to be clarified. Given the limited number of issues that have been identified as problematic, it shouldn't take more than a couple of days to have a clarified agreement that's ready to be voted on by all state employees.''
The unions have announced a press conference at 3:30 p.m. to discuss the latest developments in a long and winding road that has led to a still-unsettled budget limbo in the hot days of mid-July.
The next step would be for thousands of union members to cast their votes again on a clarified deal with Malloy. In the first round, 57 of those voting approved a four-year, no-layoff deal with Malloy that some legislators said would have been an absolute slam dunk in the private sector, where workers have faced pay cuts, pension freezes and layoffs in recent years.
But the complicated union rules required 14 of the 15 SEBAC unions - representing 80 percent of the overall membership - to approve changes in pension and healthcare benefits. The reason was that the unions purposely wanted to set a high bar for making any changes in hard-fought benefits and not make it easy to change important benefits in the lives of the union members.
As word started to spread at the state Capitol that a deal had been reached, the Administrative and Residual Union web site reported that the changes had been made on Monday morning.
There had clearly been confusion about the deal on Monday morning as a union spokesman said it was unclear what would happen during the day.
Without a deal, Malloy's proposed cuts would be among the largest in state history and would involve closing courthouses, welfare offices, motor vehicles branches, law libraries, a juvenile jail, and beds for patients undergoing detoxification. The plan also calls for increasing fares on the Metro-North Commuter Railroad by 15 percent and eliminating two seasonal ferries across the Connecticut River. The ferries, which are highly popular during the summer season, have been constantly in the news since Malloy proposed their elimination.
Some of the largest cuts would be rendered on the border town of Enfield, where three key employers - the courthouse, a major prison, and the Department of Motor Vehicles office - are all slated to close.
Sen. John Kissel, an Enfield Republican, has complained that his hometown will be particularly hard hit with the planned closure of the courthouse, a major prison and the state Department of Motor Vehicles office. But Malloy's senior adviser, Roy Occhiogrosso, says that Enfield is not being targeted.
The cuts have been proposed by Malloy to fill a budget gap of $1.6 billion over two years that would have been filled by a savings-and-concessions package with the state employees unions. The unions, however, rejected the deal that would have provided a four-year, no-layoff provision in exchange for two years of wage freezes and changes in healthcare and pension benefits. Some state employees resented the fact that they would be required to go to the doctor each year in order to avoid extra insurance premiums.
Malloy's 108-page package includes a wide variety of cuts, including eliminating the Shoreline East train service from Old Saybrook to New Haven on weekends, starting in November. That service, which had started in July 2008, covers 32 weekend trains - and the cut would save more than $4 million in the second year of the two-year budget.