While it is the year for us to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, the bargaining year is starting later than normal. For example, as you know, general design features of our health insurance plan have been sorted out at Joint Labor Management meetings involving the State and representatives of all the unions. At this point, the unions have not finalized their proposals, so the joint meetings have not started yet. Thankfully, the insurance premiums for 2011 are the same as they were in 2010, so that does give us extra time.
Neither MAPE nor AFSCME have scheduled bargaining sessions with the State as they are still preparing for bargaining. Typically, MMA ’s bargaining follows after the State has settled with these two groups and while that need not be true always, at this point we see no need to move earlier in the order.
Obviously, one of the difficult issues that bears on bargaining is the significant projected State deficit and the variety of bills that have been introduced that would change State employees pay, the number of workers in State government, and would otherwise negatively impact state employees generally, and State Supervisors particularly.
MMA will be attending all Joint Labor Management meetings on insurance, attending to the various legislative bills that would affect you, and is working with our bargaining committee to finalize bargaining proposals. MMA will provide bargaining updates as soon as the information is available.
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