CT House OKs raises, bonuses for state workers

After a debate largely waged by Republicans, the state House voted almost entirely along party lines, 96-52, to approve new contracts for state workers that include three years of raises and bonuses.

Just one Republican voted in favor of the deal — Rep. Tom Delnicki, of South Windsor, a former longtime municipal employee. Delnicki said after the vote that he looked at deals reached recently with municipal unions, many of which secured higher wage increases than state workers.

Municipalities like South Windsor also provided hazardous pay to union employees for their work on the front lines during the pandemic. Delnicki said he equates that to the bonuses in the state employee deal, which many of his colleagues argued against.

State employees have also been lobbying for hazard pay.

“I like to take a look at other precedent as to how things were done,” Delnicki said.

The state Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats, is expected to approve the deal Friday.

Democrats in the House argued the deal was the best the state could get given its fiscal position — a $4 billion budget surplus, as of this week — and decades-high inflation, and other factors such as pay increases and bonuses being offered in the private sector. The unions would’ve secured bigger raises — likely 3 or 3.5 percent — if they were to go to arbitration, Democrats said.

The deal, which covers 46,000 state employees, comes as the state is losing workers to the private sector and as the state anticipates thousands of state worker retirements before July 1 when benefit changes kick in per a 2017 agreement with state workers.

“This entire package is a retention package,” said Rep. Mike D’Agostino, D-Hamden, who added the state workforce has decreased by 15 percent over the past 10 years.

The deal calls for 2.5 percent raises for three years, starting last July 1, when the previous contracts expired. Full-time workers, who were on the state payroll as of March 31, will receive a $2,500 bonus once the agreements are finalized, and another $1,000 bonus if they are still on the payroll on July 1.

The raises combined with the bonuses amount to about a 5.8 percent increase — “very much in line with we’re seeing with the private sector,” where pay has increased about 5.1 percent in the last year, D’Agostino said. For rank-and-file workers in the private sector, pay has increased 6.7 percent, he said.

He pointed out that under the 2017 deal, state employees gave up a number of concessions and accepted zero raises and zero step increases in six of the last 12 years given the state’s financial state.

The cost of the current agreement to the state is $1.87 billion but that figure will likely rise as it assumes zero raises in the fourth year. The state and unions agreed to come back at a later date and negotiate wages for the last year of the contracts.

Republicans said they had no issues with the wage increases but did not agree with the bonuses, which state workers can receive and still retire by July 1. Gov. Ned Lamont and union representatives said the 2.5 percent raises were agreed to because of the bonuses.

While Lamont and fellow Democrats have billed the deal as a retention effort, “with bonuses going to retirees, it’s nothing more than a handout,” said Rep. Laura Devlin, R-Fairfield, the likely GOP nominee for lieutenant governor.

Rep. Harry Arora, R-Greenwich, questioned why the state would give out bonuses that aren’t tied to performance.

“We should be paying for performance,” Arora said. “We should be paying our state employees for productivity, and we should be paying them for excellence because that’s the only way we’ll have a well run state government.”

Republicans also argued the state cannot afford the bonuses, which are far above what’s being provided in the private sector, and pointed to the $95.4 billion the state has in long-term unfunded obligations.