Corbett

HARRISBURG — With Republican governors in Wisconsin and New Jersey forcing major concessions onto public employee unions, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett took a different approach.

Tentative agreements reached with the Corbett administration would provide the 55,000 employees in Pennsylvania’s two largest state government unions with an average wage increase of more than 10 percent over the life of the proposed four-year contracts, the Patriot-News of Harrisburg reported Friday.

Council 13 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 45,000 employees, reached a tentative deal late Wednesday night. Local 668 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 10,000 workers, reached a tentative deal Thursday night after four straight days of bargaining.

Union members were scheduled to vote on the pacts in the coming days, though vote counting might take several weeks.

Corbett, a Republican in his first year in office, had called for sweeping concessions by the unions at the outset of negotiations, including a 4 percent pay cut in the first year, rollbacks in health insurance coverage and five unpaid furlough days for every state employee.

Under the proposed terms, employees would face no pay reductions or furlough days. Wages, however, would be frozen in the first year of the contracts. After that, there would be an across-the-board raise of 1 percent in the second year, two raises of 0.5 percent in the second year and a 2 percent raise in the fourth year, as well as step increments averaging 2.25 percent in each of the final three years, the Patriot-News reported.

Annual sick leave would drop from 13 days to 11 days for each employee, the paper said.

A statement Friday by Local 668 said state taxpayers would save as much as $148 million a year as a result of the state decreasing its contributions to the Pennsylvania Employee Benefit Trust Fund, a reserve fund that pays for health care and other benefits of state workers.