From Capitol Confidential comes this news:
Members of New York’s second largest state-worker union, the 56,000-member Public Employees Federation, have turned down their five-year contract offer, triggering what the Cuomo Administration has said will be more than 3,000 layoffs statewide, with notices going out almost immediately.
The vote was 19,629 against to 16,906 for.
PEF President Ken Brynien said he would ask the Administration to come back to the bargaining table as soon as possible.
The defeat marks one of the first real rebukes to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who enjoys record approval ratings and on Tuesday also announced an ambitious $4 billion investment to expand Albany’s nanotech computer chip research and development center.
Negotiators for Cuomo, including his Operations Director Howard Glaser, had spent months on the contract which if passed would have run beyond the governor’s four-year term. Last month, members of the 66,000-member Civil Service Employees Association ratified a nearly identical deal.
With layoffs now looming, PEF workers who are the lowest in seniority will be getting notices of their impending firing shortly. The layoffs will take place across the state, but should hit some areas particularly hard including the Capital Region since some 17,000 PEF members live there. There also are about 5,000 in New York City and 4,200 on Long Island.
The defeated contract offered some tough terms: It called for three years without raises and higher health care costs for employees as well as furloughs, including one which would result in a week’s lost pay.
There was also a $1,000 signing bonus in the third year, along with 2 percent raises in each of the last two years.
As union seniority rules will dictate that the more than 3,000 junior employees hit the streets first, apparently, the majority of New York’s Public Employee Federation members aren’t in #Solidarity with the phrase “an injury to one is an injury to all.”
