Mission Accomplished

ALBANY, NEW YORK

Members of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000 ratified a new four-year contract in April for more than 70,000 state executive-branch employees. The deal includes an effective 11-percent increase in wages through 2007 and — significantly — a health care package that does not increase members' premiums.

"Our members told us from the very beginning that health care was the most important issue to protect," says Joel Schwartz, one of 22 members of the contract-negotiating team and president of CSEA Local 446 on Staten Island. "We fought really hard on the issue of keeping the care high-quality and affordable."

They accomplished their mission. The state wanted to shift more of the cost of health care benefits onto the employees (for instance, hiking the contribution on family plans by 5 percent). "We completely resisted those demands," says Schwartz. In the end, the contract makes no change to the percentage of employee premium contributions, contains only modest increases in co-pays and deductibles, and enhances health care coverage in other ways.

Wage hikes that began April 1 — plus an $800 bonus payable upon ratification and another $800 increase on base salary in April 2006 — total an average 11.4 percent raise over the life of the contract. "Overall — in the current climate where President Bush's budget is bankrupting almost every state in the nation — we felt we did a good job," says Schwartz.

CSEA's members agreed, voting overwhelmingly to ratify the contract. At our press deadline, the contract still needed to be approved by the state legislature and signed by Gov. George Pataki (R).