Now is an uncertain time to be an employee of the state of New Hampshire. Less than a week before the term is up for the State Employees' Association contract, there is no new one to replace it, and negotiators haven't struck a tentative deal, according to union leaders.

Meanwhile, the Legislature this week approved a budget that, according to Gov. John Lynch, will require laying off at least 200 state employees. The final tally could be much higher, depending on how Lynch, who has said he will sign the budget, meets legislators' mandate to cut an additional $25 million in personnel expenses. Lawmakers said they hoped the governor would negotiate unpaid furloughs with state unions.

How - and whether - that will work is likely to be settled in talks with the SEA, the largest state union, on a contract that's supposed to start July 1. If a new contract isn't negotiated by then, the current contract will be extended. That, some fear, could increase pressure for layoffs, since the state would not receive cost savings toward the personnel cut through negotiated means.

At a rally earlier this week, union leaders sharply criticized lawmakers who crafted the budget as well as Lynch, a Democrat, by saying he should push his negotiators harder to finish the contract.

The SEA's bargaining team "resolved itself several months ago that if Gov. Lynch really wanted to save jobs, we would end up with a contract. If he doesn't want to save jobs, we won't have a contract," said SEA Vice President Diana Lacey.

Lynch's negotiating team has sought mandatory unpaid furloughs of two days per month, Lacey said this week. Such a proposal would set employees "back three decades" by pairing "hugely significant pay cuts with loss of rights," she said. In the last two-year contract, state employees received a roughly 10 percent pay raise; the budget would suspend laid-off senior union members' "bumping rights," which allow them to take the jobs of junior employees in the same division.

Assistant Secretary of State Tom Manning, the state's manager of employee relations, could not be reached for comment yesterday afternoon.

The SEA negotiating team has offered instead a one-year wage freeze, a voluntary furlough program and a new matched-benefits plan that would allow employees to get educational aid from the state in exchange for higher health insurance costs, according to union leaders.

"We want our members to be held harmless and whole," said SEA President Gary Smith.

At press conferences this week on the budget, Lynch didn't entirely rule out a voluntary furlough program, although he said the program would have to have some sort of mechanism to track and ensure cost savings.

"I'm open to furloughs that allow us to meet the cost-savings target in the budget," he said this week. "It can't just be a free-for-all."

Lynch said the language of the $25 million cut required it be personnel-related, which gives his office some latitude to find savings in, for example, health care costs. He called layoffs his least preferred option and vowed to work with union leaders to find the best solutions.

"I will do everything I can to work with them," he said.

If Lacey alone could choose how to make a $25 million cut, she said, she would extend the proposed wage freeze to independent contractors, which she said would save the state big money.

"We wouldn't have to worry about any furloughs or any layoffs," she said.

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