House Narrowly Approves State Worker Labor Concessions

In a key vote Monday night, the House of Representatives narrowly approved $1.5 billion in state worker labor concessions to help close about one-third of the projected budget deficit over two years.

With all Republicans opposed, the measure passed 78 to 72 with one fiscally conservative Democrat, Rep. John Hampton of Simsbury, voting against.

The concessions were hailed by leaders of the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, known as SEBAC, but Republicans said the deal is still too lucrative because it includes a four-year, no-layoff provision and extends the agreement to 2027. Democrats pushed for a vote Monday because waiting for approval until the next regular session in 2018 would cost the state millions of dollars in lost savings from the labor deal.

While the House debated the issue for four hours Monday, fiscally conservative senators raised questions about the deal and postponed the Senate vote until July 31.

The concessions call for wage freezes, three furlough days, and increased copays for doctor appointments, prescription drugs and emergency room visits. Employees hired after July 1 do not get the no-layoff provisions.

At a time when the legislature has still not passed a budget amid projected deficits of $5 billion over two years, lawmakers said the SEBAC issue was among the most important votes of the year.

Rep. Danny Rovero, a key Democratic swing voter from Killingly, said he did not like certain aspects of the deal but voted for it because the state needs the $1.5 billion in savings.

“If we do not accept this agreement, we will not see a budget for a long, long time,” Rovero told House colleagues. “My town, and its social service programs, will not be able to operate.”

Despite the savings, Republicans said the state had merely tweaked the union agreements and failed to make deep structural changes that would bring state worker pensions and health care benefits closer to those in the private sector.

The SEBAC vote involved a single resolution that included the benefits concessions, along with 34 contracts for individual bargaining units that codify the wage freezes and other aspects of the deal. Republicans complained that the legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal office did not have enough time to properly analyze the union contracts because the staff received the information too late in the process.

In a closing speech Monday night, House Majority Leader Matt Ritter of Hartford talked about his grandfather, George, who organized the Hartford firefighters union, and said that collective bargaining is an important, positive development for the middle class in America. At the same time, there have been “unaffordable deals” that were highly lucrative, including the Tier 1 pension fund for state employees, he said.

During a daylong marathon at the Capitol that lasted until 9 p.m., the House also approved amendments to the state’s compacts with the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes in order to allow construction of a new casino in East Windsor. The bipartisan measure passed118 to 32 with one legislator absent.

House Republican Leader Themis Klarides of Derby said it was “sad” and “a historic day for the state of Connecticut” that the legislature did not vote Monday on a state budget — even though the fiscal year started on July 1.

“We still very strongly believe that the SEBAC agreement is detrimental to the state of Connecticut and quite frankly, detrimental to state employees because whether you are a state employee or not, you are still a citizen and a taxpayer,” Klarides said. “We have no money to move the state forward with a $5 billion deficit” projected over two years.

When the deal was approved by workers 83 percent to 17 percent, Klarides said the wide margin came because the union received “the best deal in the United States of America.”

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy ripped Klarides for her comments that the deal was “detrimental.”

“She’s ridiculous,” Malloy said Monday in Wallingford. “Ask her what she would decide to do with the 16,000 additional employees that would become employed under Tier 3 that would cost us billions of dollars more to support, than by getting to an agreement today. I mean, I think people spout words, in some cases, not even understanding what they’re saying.”

After the vote, Malloy said it was “a major step forward in creating the foundation for a responsible, balanced budget that will help put our state on a more stable and sustainable path.”

Democrats have spoken strongly in favor of the concessions, saying the unions reached the best deal possible and that no other agreement is in place to save $1.5 billion over two years. The agreement calls for a hard’ wage freeze in the first two years, one-time stipends of $2,000 for more than 40,000 unionized employees in the third year, and general wage increases of 3.5 percent in each of the fourth and fifth years.

Another provision is the creation of a new pension level, known as Tier 4, which will be a hybrid plan for new employees that is similar to a 401(k) plan that Republicans and conservative Democrats have been pushing for as a cost savings. The switch was the first time for a 401 (k) style plan.

In addition to three furlough days, the deal also calls for increasing the copay for emergency room visits to $250, up from $35. Before 2011, there was no emergency room copay for state employees. One employee visited emergency rooms more than 100 times in a single year — prompting the change to help deter overuse.

In the same way that Republican legislators predicted that the 2011 concessions would not solve the state’s problems, Rep. Fred Wilms, a Norwalk Republican, said the state will still be facing more deficits in the future.

“It doesn’t solve our problem,” Wilms said of the SEBAC deal. “We are going to be back here, and it’s going to be more and more and more painful.”

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Courant staff writer Dylan McGuinness contributed to this story.