Author Archives: Arkansas State Employees Association

About Arkansas State Employees Association

ASEA is a non-partisan, non-profit, non-union, membership-driven association that advocates on behalf of Arkansas state employees, and provides exclusive benefits to its members.

2017 Session Review

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Update and Correction: The budget cut announced last week is for this fiscal year and applies to category B. Merit is in B. No official word yet on if it can still be given. The cuts announced last night apply to the coming fiscal year and apply to category B as well. The pay plan funding is in category A.

We are following this closely and working to keep your Merit and Pay Plan intact. Stayed tuned for more updates.

Arkansas Business article:

Click here for updates on the bills we’ve been watching: 2017 bills update 4.25.17 *correction – Hammer, not Hamer for HB2055 and HB2065.

Pay Plan Updates

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See more-frequent updates like these below, including pictures of the Governor signing the bill/act on our Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/arkansasstateemployeesassociation/

3/8/17: Quick tip: If you’re having trouble finding your title or other info in the pdf of Act 365 (formerly SB289) involving the pay plan, click Ctrl then F on your keyboard. This brings up a search bar, where you can type in any word and it will find it in the document. Here is the link again: http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/…/2017R/Pages/BillInformation…

3/7/17: Thank you all so much for your emails/comments/IMs. We are printing them off, researching and preparing them for OPM. This is our third input request, and we are now to a point where most of the comments/emails are similar, or similar concerns are being repeated. We talked with OPM yesterday and they said they’ll look into the requests and work on them throughout this Spring and Summer. Thank you all again so much for helping us help them!

Pay plan update from John Bridges 3/2/17:

Merit Pay

ASEA lobbied for over a year to return the Merit pay back into the base salary. That was accomplished. You will now receive yearly salary increases based on your PE scores.

ASEA Priority Accomplished

Career Pay

The initial language that struck out Career payment was amended and replaced. It will continue to be lump sum payments. Why was it struck out? The Governor wanted to have flexibility as to how it was paid and the amounts, which could have been a positive, our talks with the Governor’s office is that he wants to re-energize the workforce.

ASEA Priority Accomplished

Reclassification/Pool Positions

In our meetings with OPM they stated that the initial reclassifications would not be perfect and thus a one thousand pool positions was created. This will allow OPM to reclassify up to one thousand positions at any time. Before the bill was ran in the Senate, it was pulled down to reclassify as many as possible in one day. A Senator reached out to ASEA and asked to get input from our members. You might have seen this on Facebook, and may have responded. We printed off all the emails, took notes from phone calls, researched as fast as we could and took them to OPM for review. As a result, we were able to get approximately 662 individuals reclassified. That initial push does not affect the one thousand pool positions. We will continue to help as much as possible, and if you have submitted your situation to us and have not heard back yet do not worry – OPM will continue to work on the pool positions and other aspects of the pay plan throughout the spring, and up until it goes into effect in July.

ASEA Priority – Getting There

Moving to New Minimums and 1%

The Governor first wanted to address high turnover positions, then start rewarding high performers with annual increases. Thus, approximately 56% of state employees moved to the new minimums and 44% received a 1% COLA. We expressed our concern that the last time the pay plan was addressed it focused on raising the base pay grades and did not focus enough on career employees. This concern will be the center of our focus going forward. See the “What’s Next?” section below for more details.

ASEA Priority – Getting There

Pay Plan Reviews

New language has been added that the pay plan must be reviewed biannually. This is very important to ASEA and state employees so that we do not go through long periods of no labor market adjustments. Smaller, more-frequent adjustments will be easier for the state to absorb. The last adjustment was eight years ago, and this adjustment comes with a price tag of approximately $56 million.

ASEA Priority Accomplished

Pay Raise Incentives

New language for allowing pay increases are scattered throughout the Class and Compensation Act, such as:

  • If revenues increase salaries, COLA’s may be increased. pg. 72 section (2).
  • Special pay increases to retain well-qualified employees and for additional duties. pg. 74 section (b).
  • Moving to the mid-point. pg. 74 section (c)(1).
  • Allows for pay-plan adjustments outside of the General Assembly. page 74 section (c) (4).
  • Pages 77-78 discuss various ways for an individual to get salary increases.
  • Allows for additional compensation for those who do not work normal state hours. pg. 80 section (19) (a)(1).
  • Allows for increases for those who provide critical support and care during the weekends at state human development centers, hospitals and correctional facilities.
  • Hazardous duty pay increased from 6% to 10%. pg. 83 section (c)(1).
  • Professional development, education, second language, geographic differentials increased from 6% to 10%. pg. 85-86.

ASEA Priority Accomplished

What’s Next?

Our work is not finished, and the pay plan is not finished. One of our board members said it best that we just got the cart out of the ditch and back on the road. In our discussions with the Governor’s office and the lead sponsor of SB289, all admitted that they could not get everything done with one swoop of the pen. That this is a two-year plan. ASEA’s priority going forward is to focus on our career state employees and to assist in submitting our members’ concerns about the reclassification to OPM for the pool position changes. We need something to alleviate the salary compression and recognize veterans for sticking through the lean years. We have ideas of asking for a tiered COLA based on years of service, something along that lines, that will relieve the salary compression and tip the cap to our career employees. This will probably upset our younger members, and there will never be a point where everyone will be satisfied. It is a balancing act of rewarding, motivating and retaining. This is a step in the right direction, and we will continue to lobby on your behalf and listen to your input. Please call or email us with suggestions or concerns. We are here to listen.

John Bridges

Assistant Executive Director

501-378-0187

jbridges@aseaar.org

 

 

 

 

SB289

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UPDATE: SB289 passed out the Senate today 34-0! Near perfect since one Senator was absent. We know there have been lots of Qs about veteran employees, and they promised they’d keep looking at it; the 1,000 pool positions is there, and they’ll keep making corrections as they shape the policy. We’ll be there with your suggestions as well next week, it should run in the House probably Monday, we’ll keep you posted!

Recapping last week: SB289 was pulled down to add amendments. Language for Career Service lump sum payments was added, as well as reviewing the reclassification. ASEA was asked to provide a report based on our members’ feedback, and as a result almost 100 positions were changed.

This morning in JBC Personnel, the bill was once again pulled down for an amendment. After a recess, an amendment to add Merit pay back as a percentage of salary was added and passed out of committee.

SB289 headed straight to the full JBC committee and received a do pass. It will run in the Senate tomorrow. So far, everything is moving in the right direction.

We do not have anything in hard copy to post as of yet. ASEA will continue to work on your behalf and will keep you updated.

Thanks,

John Bridges
Assistant Director