LANSING – The state employer and state employee unions will be asking an impasse panel to help resolve the next round of contracts, but state officials were still hopeful that the contracts could be resolved before the panel actually hears arguments.
Both sides had to indicate by Monday that there were unresolved issues to take to an impasse panel.
“Both parties are still not in agreement on both the wage issue and the benefit issue for health coverage,” Kurt Weiss, spokesperson for the Department of Technology, Management and Budget, told Gongwer News Service.
As to the distance between the two parties, “I would classify it as not unworkable,” Weiss said.
Weiss said details on the issues still unresolved will not be available until briefs are filed Friday, but the Michigan Corrections Organization, in a newsletter over the weekend, said one key point of difference is a state plan to move all employees to a single health plan.
Weiss said MCO members hired after April 1, 2010, have a different health plan that is less expensive for the state. The proposal is to move all MCO members to that plan.
The newsletter called the state’s wage increase proposals “pitiful”. It also said the state was trying to reduce some benefits specific to corrections officers, such as high security retention pay, and is trying to move the officers to 12-hour shifts.
The impasse filings will not stop negotiations, Weiss said.
“The state obviously remains open to working with the unions during the impasse process as we did in 2011,” he said, noting that a contract agreement was reached before the panel began its review two years ago.
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