Albany, NY – Civil Service Employees Association members have ratified a new five-year contract with New York State that will raise their pay by 2% a year, the union announced Aug. 9. The deal, reached with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration in June, covers more than 60,000 workers at the state’s executive-branch agencies. “Our negotiating team worked tirelessly to secure a well-rounded agreement that provides hard-earned cost-of-living increases while keeping health-insurance expenses reasonable for working families,” CSEA President Danny Donohue said in a statement. The raises will be retroactive to March 2016, when the union’s last contract expired. The contract also includes bonuses of $2,500 to $4,500 for workers with at least 15 years of continuous service, what the union called “modest” increases in health insurance co-payments, and double-time overtime pay for workers in the state’s agencies for mental health and people with developmental disabilities, “to control the excessive mandated overtime rampant in that sector.” Read more
