Dear Bargaining Unit 2 Member:
CASE has confirmed that the State Controller’s Office has received the Pay Letter for Bargaining Unit 2 and therefore the system updates are scheduled for December. According to CalHR, all employees will receive their 2.75% General Salary Increase and all necessary retroactive payments back to July 2019 in their paychecks at the end of December.
The $260 healthcare supplement will not issue with the retroactive salary increases as they are separate and each department will have to key in your individual information in regard to the $260.00 healthcare supplement. The State Controller’s Office (SCO) is working with CalHR to finalize the communication and instructions to departments.
The email that CASE sent out to the membership on October 30, 2019 was based on countless past Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) where it took an average of a month for the SCO and CalHR to process any salary increase. At that time, CASE was not informed of any delay in which CalHR would not send the necessary Pay Letter to the SCO until November. The CASE Board of Directors is actively working to gain more information from CalHR as well as the SCO. CASE has delivered a letter to the Director of CalHR demanding an explanation of the reasons that members of Unit 2 will have to wait until January 2020 to receive the raises agreed to in the current MOU. This delay is not unique to members of Unit 2 and applies to the approximately 100,000 other employees who also agreed to new contracts earlier this year. The CASE Board of Directors is extremely unhappy with the delay and knows of no reason for the delays by CalHR in producing the Pay Letters.
The tentative agreement was reached on September 4, 2019, was ratified by CASE membership and the Legislature by September 13, 2019, and was signed by the Governor on October 13, 2019. The work on the Pay Letters could have begun after September 13, 2019 when it was passed by the Legislature because the MOU was negotiated with CalHR, which represents the Governor and the Executive Branch. The work could have then been finalized after the Governor’s signature in October 2019 which would have allowed the raises to be reflected in the October or November paychecks.
CASE is now considering all options, including litigation, as the failure to timely honor contractual obligations cannot be ignored. CASE will update the membership once we receive additional information regarding the 2.75% General Salary Increase, retroactive payments, or the $260 healthcare supplement.
Please direct any questions or comments regarding the attached information to info@calattorneys.org. This email may not reach all CASE members. Accordingly, CASE encourages you to pass this email along to any of your colleagues who may not have received it. If you are not receiving CASE emails and wish to receive future communications from CASE, please send an email to info@calattorneys.org and request to be added to the distribution list.
As always, your support of CASE and your colleagues in Bargaining Unit 2 is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
The CASE Board of Directors