ALBANY -- Whether his administration goes through with layoffs as scheduled next week is up to the Public Employees Federation at this point, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.
"It is up to the membership and the leadership of PEF," Cuomo said when asked about the nearly 3,500 state employee layoffs scheduled to be implemented on Oct. 19 following a union vote to reject a contract offer.
Representatives of the governor's office and the 56,000-member union are continuing to talk.
And PEF has tentatively scheduled a Monday meeting of its executive board. Members of the 130-member panel must approve plans for a revised contract before an offer could be sent to union members for ratification. The time and place of the meeting hadn't been set as of Wednesday evening.
Union officials are continuing to push for a new offer, and some members have set up an unofficial website, http://www.peffamilies.com, to rally support.
Additionally, PEF last week had the Hart Associates polling firm conduct a phone survey of members related to the contract. Union spokeswoman Darcy Wells wouldn't reveal the nature of the questions or the poll results.
Cuomo's remarks came after his Cabinet laid out plans for bringing more efficiency and cost-effectiveness to government operations, and were the latest chapter in what has become a back-and-forth between PEF and the administration, with each side suggesting the ball is in the other's court.
On Tuesday, PEF President Ken Brynien said the Cuomo administration's proposal contained so many unanswered questions that a union vote couldn't go forward. He also noted that voting on a revised contract could take two weeks given the time required to mail a proposal to union members, who live all over the state, and then to mail out ballots and have them returned.
Cuomo on Wednesday wouldn't say how timing of a re-vote -- if that were to happen -- could impact the layoffs.
Thousands of union members in late September began receiving their 21-day notices, meaning they could be off the payroll as of next Wednesday.
In July, the governor began the layoff process, sending out several waves of notices. But those were rescinded when PEF's leadership tentatively accepted the five-year contract. Members, however, failed to ratify the deal by a 19,629 to 16,906-vote margin.
Absent savings from the contract, which called for three years without raises, furloughs and higher health care costs, Cuomo said layoffs would commence.
Earlier in the summer, New York's largest state employee union, the 66,000-member Civil Service Employees Association, approved an almost identical contract. In return, Cuomo gave assurances against layoffs among that union, at least those prompted by budget requirements.
The CSEA contract contains a clause that protects against layoffs "resulting from the facts and circumstances that gave rise to the present need for $450 million in workforce savings" in the 2011-12 and 2012-13 fiscal years.
PEF members have said they wanted stronger protections against layoffs, but Cuomo on Wednesday stressed there are no surefire guarantees.
"It's not a no-layoff pledge," the governor said of the language in the CSEA agreement, which was mirrored in the rejected PEF contract.
CSEA spokesman Stephen Madarasz said he believes the union's contract offers "ironclad" protections against layoffs -- aside from any downsizing efforts, which would need the Legislature's approval.
"Beyond that, he's said he does not want to do layoffs," Madarasz said of Cuomo.
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