There are a number of claims and appeals in process that are several years old appealing retirement coverage from past years. For each of these appeals we are required to research old records generally to justify why WRS coverage was not granted or benefits offered. We are very cognizant about how benefits are administered because of the high price for payment of past service as the University is required to pay the employer and employee costs plus interest for each year from the year the service should have been reported to current. We are very concerned about getting the appropriate benefits for the employee. It is very important for the new employee be informed of their benefits as well as the critical deadlines for signing up.
Communication is very important.
We encourage the Divisions to always send a representative to the monthly Divisional Payroll and Benefits meetings. It has been brought to our attention that all of us need to do a better job of keeping track of which employees are authorized for transactions. UWPC will meet with the computer center security office to go over this issue and to implement a better tracking system. Management of the authorizations is becoming a much larger task. The base has gone up for the Social Security part for 2001.