ALBANY (AP) -- The results of a union vote are expected late Monday afternoon on an austere contract proposal that is critical to workers but also to New York's state budget, a union spokesman said.
The deal would freeze wages for three years for 66,000 union workers but it also would avoid hundreds of layoffs.
About 30,000 paper ballots are expected to be counted and certified Monday. Steven Madarasz, spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association union, said leaders were cautiously optimistic it would pass.
"No one is overjoyed, but I think there's a realization," he said.
The current state budget is counting hundreds of millions of dollars in concessions from all its unions, much of it from the CSEA, the state's largest and one that represents many of the state's blue collar workers. The concessions were part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's effort to address a $10 billion deficit in the budget adopted April 1.
Cuomo has said repeatedly that if unions reject the deal, he would proceed with the nearly 1,000 layoffs he said would be needed to achieve savings of a similar amount in the concessions.
The tentative deal also would provide employees with lump-sum "retention payments" of $775 in 2013. A $225 payment would be made in 2014 and workers would get 2 percent pay increases in 2014 and 2015.
Workers also will have to take nine unpaid days off and pay more for their health insurance.
Another important vote is expected to be in September over a similar tentative contract with the Public Employees Federation, which represents many of the state's white collar workers.
Cuomo's plan with all union contracts would cut workforce costs by $1.63 billion over the course of their agreements.
The Cuomo administration said the contracts would be $3.8 billion less expensive to the state than the contract agreements in 2007.
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