Hartford — After two days of leaks and speculation, state employee union leaders and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy struck a tentative framework to recommend a $1.6 billion concessions framework to member bargaining units.

The State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, comprising representatives of all worker unions, voted to engage in formal discussions with the Malloy administration — a legal prerequisite to any tentative deal.

The governor’s office announced the tentative deal Tuesday evening. Unions also were expected to notify their members Tuesday through posts on the bargaining units’ websites.

“Our current economic reality requires that we revisit and redefine the state’s relationship with employees and I want to thank the leaders of our state employee unions,” Malloy wrote in a statement. “Over the past several months, we have been respectfully meeting together in good faith to discuss ways to help save taxpayer dollars while respecting the contract under which state employees are currently operating. This framework will surely create more affordable and more sustainable labor costs in a way that generates structural, long-term savings of over $20 billion over the course of the next two decades.”

The proposed deal reportedly would save the state $708 million next fiscal year and $845 million in 2018-19 — effectively matching the $1.57 billion, two-year savings target Malloy set in February.

The proposed plan, according to a source, would freeze wages for each of the next two fiscal years. Employees, most of whom are working this fiscal year under contracts that expired last June, also would forfeit any retroactive pay hike.

The cumulative three-year wage freeze would provide nearly half of the total projected savings. Workers would receive 3.5 percent base pay hikes in 2020 and in 2021, and also would be eligible for step increases.

The deal also would double pension contributions for most workers, create a hybrid pension/defined-contribution plan for future workers, increase health care co-payments and premiums, require active workers to contribute more toward their retirement health care benefit, and curtail health care benefits for existing retirees.

In return for these concessions, the state would extend its worker benefits contract — which otherwise would expire in 2022 — until 2027.

That latter provision, though, remains a huge point of contention. While Malloy’s fellow Democrats in House and Senate leadership praised the deal, the top Republicans were skeptical about whether the concessions’ value was sufficient to offset the five-year extension.

Connecticut has one of the worst-funded public-sector retirement benefit programs in the nation, and some have argued the state should allow the contract to expire and then dramatically curtail benefits after that.

Keith M. Phaneuf is a reporter for The Connecticut Mirror (www.ctmirror.org). Copyright 2017 © The Connecticut Mirror.

kphaneuf@ctmirror.org