The CT Legislative session ended on Wednesday June 4th and we had some successes: we killed a bill to curb telework, killed 2 bills to outsource inspections, killed a bill prohibiting SEEC employees from any political expression, etc. However, on an important issue (the A&R union contract), we did not come to an agreement with the State before the Legislative session ended. This means that our current contract will expire on 6/30/2025 and we will be under an "extension" agreement for a year while we continue negotiations on our successor agreement.
An "extension" agreement carries some limitations with it, mainly, there will not be a wage increase (GWI) in place on July 1 and there won't be any Steps/TopStepPayments in January. We will be seeking to implement wage increases retro-actively to July 1, 2025, and (if necessary) to implement retro-active Step increases as well. Also, our Tuition Reimbursement and our Professional Development Funds will be empty until we can attain funding in our new contract. This also means that the 10 days of Professional Leave will be counted and limited from the inception of this contract on July 1, 2021.
The telework policy is not impacted by the expiration of our contract nor are any other provisions of our contract other than those listed above.
Most likely we will continue to negotiate with the State for a brief amount of time and then pursue interest arbitration to achieve a final remedy for our contract. The Governor's Office continues to be weary of making a fiscal/wage commitment until there is a better understanding of how the federal budget will impact our State's finances. Of course, our position is that the State has an obligation to pay employees a fair increase in wages as our personal expenses continue to climb and that the State has enough excess revenue to afford a wage increase. If necessary, we will let an arbitrator force the State to meet it's financial obligation to its employees but right now we will continue to work on settling some of our language changes while we continue to push for a general wage increase.