Our Department of Education and State College System contract negotiations teams have been hard at work fighting for the best contracts in history.
December 31 is the deadline to reach an agreement in accordance with State law. If the parties are unable to reach an agreement by December 31, the statue allows the parties to enter a mediation period until January 10 in order to reach agreement. Because we have not been able to reach tentative agreements that we are comfortable sending to the membership for ratification, we have mutually decided to enter the mediation period with both the Department of Education and the Nebraska State College System.
Our negotiations teams will return the bargaining table next week, and we look forward to providing an update on our progress then. We are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to reach tentative agreements at both the Department of Education and the State College System by January 10. If you are not yet a NAPE/AFSCME member, please join us and stand with your colleagues to ensure we win the best contract ever.