-9/26/25
A&R continues to operate under an extension agreement while we negotiate our new contract. The A&R Negotiations team has been at the negotiating table with the State since November of 2024 so this has been quite an extensive amount of time. Through most of this time, we have not had what we consider to be a serious wage offer; meaning, we have received wage offers from the State but those wage offers didn't come close to reflecting the current economic times. Since the wage offers were well below our threshold for acceptance, the A&R team summarily rejected them without much consideration. The most recent wage offer from the State was 2% (plus steps) for two years and two years of wage re-openers. This is at least a reasonable offer but hardly what A&R would consider acceptable. We countered that offer with a wage offer over 3% for three years (plus steps each year) and a 4th year GWI re-opener but Steps would already be locked in. It has been weeks since we made our counter-offer, and although we have met with the State several times, we have not yet received any further financial offers from the State.
Several unions from the Judicial Branch had declared impasse in early Summer and just recently some of the Executive Branch unions have declared impasse. This means that these unions are choosing to go to arbitration to settle their contract. A&R has made advancements on our language items and we will continue to meet with the State to resolve as many issues as we can before we declare impasse, but while the State is still engaged in open discourse on our proposals, we have chosen to remain engaged in discussions at the table. Despite the fact that we still have a list of proposals we need to discuss with the State, we do need to keep our eyes on the calendar as we need a settled or arbitrated decision to be completed in late April of 2026 in order to have a contract passed by the legislature. Very soon it will be necessary for us to declare impasse despite any productive negotiations just to force a result in time for the legislative session.