HARTFORD - With state employees getting closer to leaving their jobs, negotiators for the unions and the Malloy administration were racing to try to reach an agreement as early as Friday.
The two sides understand that time is running out before the layoff notices take effect for the newest employees who have only two weeks' notice.
Malloy's chief negotiators, Mark Ojakian and Linda Yelmini, were meeting with the union representatives in Hartford on Thursday evening over exactly how to recover pay raises that are being paid to thousands of state employees this month. Under the original deal, the unions agreed to a two-year wage freeze and changes in their health and pension benefits in exchange for a guarantee of four years of no layoffs.
But many state employees will be receiving pay raises on Friday, July 29 - which is contrary to a two-year wage freeze. As such, the negotiators are discussing whether the two-year wage freeze could be extended beyond the current biennium and dip into the start of the third year.
Some insiders have soundly rejected the idea of trying to get 45,000 unionized state employees to send the money back to the state. Beyond the administrative headaches, the enforcement would be virtually impossible.
"Perhaps the easiest is if we could get this done in two payment cycles. That's an easy way to do it,'' Malloy told reporters Thursday. "There's a claw-back way to do it. It's one of those two ways. ... What it does is even itself out over time. There's easy ways to do it. That's the easiest.''
Union spokesman Matt O'Connor said early Thursday evening that no deal had been reached.