The State of Nebraska approached our union in July with a proposal to create new job classifications in the certain Information Technology job series. While the state has the right to create new classifications, it must negotiate over the pay of newly created jobs.
Our negotiations team had some concerns with the state’s initial proposal. First, we did not want current employees being moved to a new job to be subject to the promotion/demotion formula in our contract. Instead, we counter proposed that current employees being reclassified into these new classifications be able to keep their current step on the salary schedule.
Second, the state proposed an entirely new job series for data governance. We had concerns about the starting salaries the state proposed not being competitive. We conducted some research on comparable jobs in other states and sent the state a counter proposal.
The state agreed to both our counter proposals regarding steps and starting pay for the data governance series. Our Executive Director has signed a letter of agreement with the state. You can see the entire agreement here.
While it is our hope to conduct more meaningful midterm bargaining for IT classifications as we discussed at ratification this past winter, that requires the Governor to be willing to do so. In the winter, it seemed that would be a real possibility. Now the governor is proposing $500 million in budget cuts, and he is no longer willing to negotiate further at this time.
We plan to continue growing to give all employees a stronger voice on the job. It’s more important than ever to get organized and make sure we protect public services and our state employees’ jobs. If you are not a member of our union, will you become a member today?