A&R’s Thirty-fourth Annual Convention will be held this Thursday, April 20, 2017 at the Chowder Pot IV (165 Brainard Rd, Hartford, CT  06114).  The Annual Convention is open to all active members.  Registration begins at 4:30 PM and ends promptly at 6:00 PM.  A brief awards ceremony for academic scholarship winners will be held at 5:30 PM.  The meeting will be called to order (and doors closed) at 6:00 PM.

Members MUST provide photo ID and MUST register before 6:00 PM to gain access to the convention.

Convention Call

Employees who are eligible for longevity payments should see them in the final paycheck of April (4/27/17).  Longevity will be paid to those who are qualifying for the first time as well.

The unilateral action taken by management to rewrite the Revenue Examiner and Tax Correction Examiner job specs will be reversed in short order.  The “new” job specs are NOT in effect, there remains a voluntary system for bi-lingual assistance in DRS.  This issue is currently at the bargaining table and the State is clearly aware of that.  The action taken by DRS and DAS was clearly out-of-line, improper, and undermines the integrity of the on-going negotiation process.  

Further, from A&Rs stand-point, there is a deeper issue to be addressed as there have been a series of highly questionable

The deadline to submit applications for A&R scholarships is April 7th.

10 scholarships are awarded to High School graduates/seniors who will be entering post-secondary education
5 scholarships are awarded to current post-secondary students continuing their post-secondary education.
A&R Scholarship Application

Winners will be announced at the A&R Convention scheduled for April 20th at the USS Chowder Pot in Hartford.

Posted 3/30/17

A&R's position has been and remains that the Top Step Payment should have been paid to members regardless of the contract extension signed in July, 2016.  An institutional grievance for payment was filed.  Not surprisingly, OLR denied the grievance at Step 2 just this past week.  The union is pursuing the grievance to Step 3 (arbitration).  Via the grievance process, we are seeking back-pay.

At the negotiations table the union proposed reasonable wage increases, payment of increments, and the top step payment in each year of our successor contract.  Negotiations are ongoing, with

The Tier2/2A/3 pension breakpoint has been updated for 2017, the breakpoint is now $77,889.

To the advantage of members, the breakpoint has increased by roughly 3.6% for the past 3 years.  This is a huge improvement compared with the first 30 years in which the breakpoint rose by 6% per year.

Tier2/2A/3 has a multiplier of 1.4% times years of service times salary and an increase of .4333% times years of service for salary above the breakpoint.

This means that your pension will be roughly calculated as such:

.014 x YrsOfService x AvgSalary
                        +
.004333 x YrsOfService x