Claire Newell, president of Local 2872, part of Council 94, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, prepares for a meeting with her membership to discuss a tentative contract agreement with the state.

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The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

PROVIDENCE — The votes are starting to roll in on new contracts that would leave most state workers without raises this year and force them to pay more and more each year for their health insurance packages, until they are paying up to 25 percent of the premiums.

Several hundred state workers have already said yes to new contracts. They include affiliates of the Laborers International Union of North America and Local 580 of the Rhode Island Alliance of Social Service Employees.

The winning argument: the economy is bad, state government is eliminating hundreds of jobs, and by the time negotiators sit back down at the bargaining table, it could be worse.

“People were concerned,” acknowledged Sen. Frank Ciccone, a field representative for an arm of the Laborers that counts about 900 state workers among its members. “I was trying to be as realistic and honest as I could be with them saying, look … four years ago I might have recommended that they didn’t ratify it, but with the economy the way it is now and the state in the condition that it is in, is it a great contract? No. Is it a good contract? I would have to say yes.”

But yesterday, an affiliate of the National Education Association that represents the Association of Clerical-Technical Employees at the University of Rhode Island soundly defeated the proposal with local NEA director Robert Walsh acknowledging that many people at the meeting “spoke about their frustration with the overall economic package.”

And several thousand other state workers are caught in the middle of a war between leaders of the largest employees union, Council 94, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees that has put that union’s executive director — and lead negotiator — Dennis Grilli on the defensive about his own raise and the $10,044 “waiver payment” he got for taking his wife’s state-provided health insurance, instead of a union package.

Stunned that after 30 years in the union trenches he has become one of the targets of the angry debate, Grilli this week said he would give up the 3 percent raise awarded him by his union’s leadership board last spring that boosted his salary to $102,900 a year.

“If it would cure all the ills, I would certainly give it back in a minute,” he said. “If that’s what it takes to resolve this issue for the state employees, I will gladly give my 3 percent to anybody they want to designate it to… [But] one has nothing to do with the other.”

With contract briefing sessions going on behind closed doors across state government this week and next, the ratification votes are all due into Council 94 headquarters by July 24 for a final tally.

Among the highlights of the Council 94 contract proposal: raises of zero, 2.5 percent, 3 percent and 3 percent during each of the next four years; a one-day pay reduction in the current year that employees can recoup as a paid leave day; and escalating increases in the percentage-of-premium the employees will be required to pay for their health insurance that will hit some — who are currently paying a relatively small percentage of their salary for the coverage — harder than others.

In the first year, the employees will be required to pay between 8 percent and 25 percent, depending on how much they make, of the $17,827 cost of a family, health, dental and vision plan. In the final contract year, they will be paying between 15 percent and 25 percent.

Days after the Council 94 leadership board rejected the proposal, a faction called a second vote — which succeeded — on a day union president J. Michael Downey was not there, because he was attending an event honoring his brother’s retirement after three decades in the Coast Guard. Each local has since gone off on its own direction, in some cases without inviting anyone from the Council 94 executive ranks to explain what they will soon be voting on.

The angst within Council 94 has been exacerbated by demographics.

Grilli estimates that more than half of the union’s 4,500 state employee members make less than $45,000 annually, which makes them particularly sensitive to the shift in health insurance. Instead of paying a small percentage of their salaries (as little as 2.5 percent), they will have to pay an escalating share of the premiums, which could mean a big dollar increase for some.

A longtime plumber at URI, Downey personally views the proposal as unfair to those at the lower end of the state pay ladder and doesn’t believe it will pass. On the health-insurance front, “It’s too drastic, too quickly. It hurts the lower paid people much more than those [with] higher paid salaries,” he says, citing URI’s $300,000-plus basketball coach as a favorite example.

The Carcieri administration has refused to say how much of a projected $60.6 million in personnel savings this year hinges on passage of the new contracts.

New Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe also refused to disclose how many state workers are covered by the contracts already approved, and the agencies where they work, saying “I defer those specific questions to Local 580.” Local 580 president Lucie Burdick did not respond to inquiries.

Complicating the sales pitch: some state employees did better at the bargaining table than others.

For example, the Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education reached agreement at the end of March with 12 bargaining units at the University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island.

The contracts cover about 1,400 people at URI , 540 at CCRI and 510 at RIC, including professors, driver’s education instructors, doctors and the crew of URI’s research vessel the Endeavor. Their last raise was on July 1, 2006. With one exception, their new contracts provided salary increases of 2.5 percent on Jan. 1 this year, 2.5 percent effective on July 1 and 3 percent effective July 1 next year. The graduate assistants are the exception. They were promised flat raises of $500 on Jan. 1 of this year, $600 on Sept. 1 and $750 on Sept. 1 next year.

On the health insurance front, they, too, were required to pay a portion of their premiums, but not as much as other state workers. For those in the state college arena making less than $50,000, for example, a family plan would cost the employee 8 percent of the premium starting on July 1 of this year, and 10 percent starting July 1 next year. Other state employees making less than $45,000 would have to pay up to 12 percent of the premium this year, up to 15 percent next year.

“I believe the low-end people were hit a little more than they should have been,” said Grilli yesterday, while pointing to what he described as a hard-won concession: the promise of up to $500 in health-care premium reductions for employees who follow certain “wellness” regimens, such as having annual physicals.

Ciccone also labeled as significant the Carcieri administration’s promise to union leaders — including the Laborers’ Ron Coia — to back off plans to hire more private companies to do more of what state employees currently do. (Kempe would not say what that promise covers.)

Asked what he made of the discontent in his union, Grilli said: “I don’t think they are being unrealistic. I think many of them probably don’t understand all of the nuances of the package. I believe with the budget deficit that we face here in Rhode Island — and nationally, everything seems to be going to hell in a hand basket with the gas prices and everything — it seems like everything is hitting them all at once and I can understand their frustration.”

Grilli said the union was putting the package to a vote out of a belief the members have a right to vote on it. “It doesn’t mean they have to vote for it … but I believe it was the best we could do under the circumstances.”

A posting on the Local 580 Web site indicates smooth passage there on July 1. “Few questions were asked and a call was made to take the vote. It passed by an overwhelming majority of 95 percent.”

The outcome was less certain as 20 or so state workers from William E. Davies Career and Technical High School and the Rhode Island School for the Deaf gathered in a small conference room at the University of Rhode Island’s downtown Providence building yesterday for a briefing.

Before it began, their Local 2872 president Claire Newell said of the proposal: “They probably aren’t happy about it. I’m not happy about it.”

She refused to say how she planned to vote.

With reports from Steve Peoples of The Journal’s State House Bureau.

CORRECTION: Based on incorrect information from the governor's office, an earlier version of this story reported that members of Local 580 of the Rhode Island Alliance of Social Services Employees received a raise this year. The last raise for Local 580  was for 3 percent for the year beginning July 1, 2007, according to Jerome Williams, director of the Department of Administration.

kgregg@projo.com