PROVIDENCE — Workers in Rhode Island’s largest state employee union group are voting on a contract deal that would give them $3,000 bonuses if they’re vaccinated against COVID-19, but Governor Dan McKee’s administration is still refusing to discuss its details, even as opposition in the General Assembly starts to emerge.
Though the votes will be counted Thursday, some Council 94 units around the state have already cast their ballots, according to union officials. And, union reps said, the state has already signed off on its end of the bargain. So if it’s approved by a majority of Council 94 members, it will be a done deal, according to union officials.
The 3,800 state workers under the umbrella of Council 94 are in a variety of roles around the state, from nursing to clerical, from locals at the University of Rhode Island to Eleanor Slater Hospital. The president of Council 94, J. Michael Downey, described the bonus as an incentive for state workers to get vaccinated, and a reward for people who already did so through a difficult nearly two-year stretch.
“I think the governor’s been really concerned about getting everyone vaccinated,” Downey said. “To those that are upset about it, I can only hope they get something from all the money that’s been sent to Rhode Island.”
If ratified, it would be a consequential deal: If the same proportion of Council 94 workers are vaccinated as the population of adult Rhode Islanders, currently about 85 percent with a completed primary vaccine series, the workers would receive a total of nearly $10 million.
That doesn’t count people who might come off the fence to get the bonus, nor does it take into consideration other unions asking for the same deal — that’s already happening — or its possibly being extended to nonunion workers. More than 17,000 names are on the state’s online payroll for the 2021 fiscal year, implying a total payout reaching into the tens of millions if all state workers become eligible and 85 percent are vaccinated.
According to Council 94, the deal they’ve negotiated — the first of its kind — would involve two $1,500 bonuses, one paid out after it’s ratified and the other next year. The deal also includes 2.5 percent annual raises, according to people familiar with its details.
Unlike his counterpart in Massachusetts, McKee has not imposed a vaccine mandate on the state workforce in Rhode Island. Some state workers are subject to the Department of Health’s health care worker mandate, but one of the state’s two health care facilities, Eleanor Slater Hospital, still remains out of compliance with it two months later.
Among the questions McKee’s office and the state Department of Administration declined to answer: What public health experts, if any, did they consult in agreeing to the tentative deal with $3,000 bonuses? One such authority can be ruled out: the state Department of Health, which said it is not involved in state worker union negotiations and wasn’t involved in this one.
McKee himself on Tuesday declined to get into the agreement or the vaccine bonus in an interview with WJAR’s Brian Crandall, but said “stipends” are commonplace, as they were in the recent state-negotiated Providence teacher’s union contract. In this case, he said, they would be paid with federal dollars. He told Crandall that stipends don’t count against workers’ base salaries, so the state wouldn’t continue paying it for years on end.
Though the deal has gained some support, it’s also faced blowback: state Representative Charlene Lima, a Cranston Democrat and the deputy speaker, said she’ll pre-file legislation prohibiting the state and local governments from negotiating contracts that give bonuses for getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
“It is unfair to give bonuses to state and municipal employees for getting the Covid vaccine while so many state and municipal workers made the decision to get vaccinated without taxpayer funded financial bonuses,” Lima said in a written statement. “It is also unfair to the taxpayers who made the decision to get the vaccine because they felt it was the right thing to do for themselves and for the health and safety of the public and without any financial inducements to have to fund these bonuses.”
Republican House Minority Leader Blake Filippi and State Representative Sherry Roberts, a Republican representing West Greenwich and Coventry, have also opposed the bonuses. Roberts said Tuesday it would be unfair to those who declined to get the vaccine for religious or medical reasons.
“While I am not anti-vaccine, I believe that each individual should be able to make their own informed medical decisions,” Roberts said in a news release.
Opposition to incentives may reflect sentiment more broadly in Rhode Island.
The state Department of Health in May did opinion research locally about vaccine incentives, when Ohio and other states were doing or preparing for million-dollar sweepstakes. Only 35 percent of 861 respondents, reached by phone and via online, were in favor of the idea of people getting something in exchange for being vaccinated, according to the Department of Health.
“Different factors are motivators for different people when it comes to vaccination,” Health Department spokesman Joseph Wendelken said in an email. “Like other states, incentives have been used in Rhode Island in some limited instances to try to reach the segment of the population that event organizers felt would be responsive to incentives.”
Polling may show different opinions today than they did in May, Wendelken noted.
But it has certainly helped inform Rhode Island’s approach. As other states moved toward million-dollar vaccine lottery sweepstakes, free hunting licenses or a round of drinks, Rhode Island has been relatively more circumspect. At one event, recipients were eligible for an AirPods raffle and $5 Dunkin’ gift cards. The state has also offered $10,000 grants to nonprofits if the state hits certain benchmarks for the number of people vaccinated.
Also, in early November, McKee unveiled what his office called the “Vaccines are Grand Slam” incentive. At an event with TV and radio anchor Gene Valicenti and businessman John Hazen White Jr. — but not the Health Department — McKee unveiled a program where people would get $1 scratch tickets if they got vaccinated at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center on Nov. 2 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The 1,000 Rhode Island Lottery baseball-themed tickets were available on a first-come, first-served basis. Only 46 people were vaccinated that day, according to Health Department figures. White described the turnout as “dead.”
“It was me and like six media guys and that was it,” said White, the owner of the heating, cooling and plumbing component manufacturer Taco Comfort Solutions.
White said McKee’s office approached his own about the scratch ticket idea and asked him to fund it.
“He’s a good guy, this guy, Dan McKee,” White said. “I was just trying to help.”
McKee’s office said the rest of the scratch tickets that went unused would be allocated to partner clinics around the state, locations that haven’t yet been determined. They’d be provided to adult Rhode Islanders who received a first, second or booster shot, according to McKee spokeswoman Alana O’Hare.
Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him @bamaral44.