This story has been updated.

Two more state employee bargaining units declared an impasse Tuesday with Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration after the Executive Branch offered $2,000 lump sum bonuses in lieu of raises.

The breakdown in talks between the administration and unions representing judicial marshals and their immediate supervisors comes just six days after Lamont’s office insisted it was preparing to offer raises to bargaining units.

The latest declarations now mean three bargaining units have stopped negotiations with the governor and are preparing to seek arbitration. The 1,300-member Judicial Professional Employees Union, which represents probation officers, information technology analysts, assistant clerks, counselors and other support staff, announced an impasse July 2.

But unless Lamont — whose administration has pledged raises on multiple occasions — strikes a compromise, it could find itself at odds with the bulk of state government’s unionized workforce, even as the governor weighs launching a campaign for a third term in the near future.

“We have to wonder if, from where he sits, the governor even sees the lives of working families and the public they serve,” said Bobby Perez, president of the 100-member marshal supervisors’ unit within CSEA-SEIU Local 2001, who said the lump-sum payments won’t address problems with recruitment, retention and a rising cost of living.

About 35 bargaining units, nearly all of state government’s unionized workforce, are working under contracts that expired when the current fiscal year began July 1.

Lamont negotiated, and legislators approved, a new contract in late May for nearly 900 unionized state police troopers, granting those employees a 2.5% general wage hike and a step increase this fiscal year. A step typically adds about 2 percentage points, bringing the effective value of the raise to about 4.5%.

“The decision to withhold a raise for some state workers, while others, like the State Police, receive the raises they deserve, shows a blatant disregard for the hard-working public servants who keep this state running,” Perez said. “We will not accept this disrespect, and we will continue to fight for the fair wages our members have earned.”

Angelo Arena, president of IBPO Local 731, which represents about 700 judicial marshals, said, “We now face the reality of working under an expired contract without the wage increases we deserve, all while health care costs continue to rise. As a result, our courthouses remain critically understaffed, and the public remains at risk.”

Lamont’s office told The Connecticut Mirror last week, shortly after the Judicial Professional Employees Union became the first unit to pursue arbitration, that offers of raises were forthcoming for all unions.

But on Tuesday, the administration was unclear about its offers for compensation.

“The administration has been in touch with SEBAC [State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition] and plans to present an offer regarding wages and work conditions in the coming days,” Chris Collibee, the governor’s budget spokesman, said Tuesday, though he didn’t specify whether that offer would involve ongoing raises or one-time bonuses. “Gov. Lamont immensely values the contributions of our state employees, as evidenced by consistent wage increases, and our offer will reflect that.”

Still, state employee unions have been clear they will hold the governor to his word when it comes to raises.

Lamont told hundreds of members of Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, during an April 25 conference in Mystic, that “Every year that I’ve been here, you’ve gotten a raise, and every year I’m here, you’re going to get a raise.”

Since 2021, as Connecticut has enjoyed unprecedented surpluses driven by aggressive and increasingly controversial budget caps, most unionized workers have received effective annual raises of 4.5%.

But negotiations typically address work conditions and other issues besides compensation and this year’s talks were expected to include one particularly sticky point.

The governor and many legislators have expressed increasing concerns over remote-work rules, set up shortly after COVID struck Connecticut in spring 2020, and their effects on productivity. Unions have been reluctant to alter those work-from-home rules.

Lamont, a fiscally moderate Democrat, also has been at odds with labor frequently over his budget policies in recent years.

Union leaders say the administration has been too slow to rebuild a workforce that shrank during the 2010s to help close frequent budget deficits.

They also say the governor has been too focused on building large fiscal reserves and paying down Connecticut’s sizeable pension debt to the detriment of education, health care, municipal aid and other core programs.

“Connecticut faces a public service crisis, and our leadership team stepped up to propose real solutions in contract talks with the Judicial Branch’s representatives,” said Rob Moreau, president of the Judicial Professional Employees Union, which broke off contract talks with the administration last week after no raise had been offered. “We were focused on addressing recruitment and retention gaps by boosting investments in the staff that all state residents depend on. Unfortunately, branch representatives came up short on the kind of appropriate pay that would make a difference.”