General Wage Increase: All members are getting a long awaited 3.5% raise effective (6/21/19). This will be slightly offset by an increase of a 0.5% contribution to the pension fund. Both changes will show up in the July 19th paycheck.
Pension Funding Discussions: The State and SEBAC met on July 8th to discuss the pension funding agreement that has been in place since 2016. This is an effort to re-amortize the pension debt and re-structure the state’s payment plan. We met on July 8th We want to be clear as to what this represents, and what this does not represent: This is about impacting the timing and level of the annual payments made by the state into the SERs pension fund. This is NOT about changing pension benefits. Regardless of the pension funding agreements, the pension benefits will remain in full force. SEBAC unions have no interest in modifying the benefits or any other aspect of the SERs plan or the SEBAC 2017 agreement. This is a pension funding issue only. The state is seeking to achieve annual savings by re-structuring the debt and would need the approval of SEBAC leadership to modify its current payment plan. The next meeting between the State and Sebac meeting is scheduled for July 15th.
Pharmacy Agreement: Comptroller Kevin Lembo announced that the Healthcare Cost Containment Committee has reached a landmark agreement with CVS/Caremark which will capture the rebates and savings typically offered by the pharmacuetical industry which historically have not been passed on to the State. The Healthcare Cost Containment Committee is a joint labor/management committee overseeing the administration of our medical benefits and costs. This agreement was unanimously approved by the joint HCCC and will produce savings without impacting our phamacy benefits.