News

Health care talks fall flat

Mayor: Insurance pool could have saved $1M

By Patrick Anderson
Staff Writer
Published: November 26, 2008

The city and its workers have failed to come to an agreement on joining a state health insurance pool and are now all but assured of missing the deadline for switching to the plan, which Mayor Carolyn Kirk has estimated could save the city $1 million annually.

A group representing each of the city's 16 municipal employee unions met Monday to negotiate with the city on its proposal to join the state's Group Insurance Commission, but did not vote on the plan, citing insufficient detail from the city on the out-of-pocket expenses employees would pay under the new system.

Rank and file members of the unions were concerned that they were being rushed to make the change without having all necessary information about the plan, or time to process it, Deputy Fire Chief Steve Aiello, chairman of the union negotiating committee, said yesterday.

"The city made a proposal to us, we made a counter proposal and we did not reach an agreement," Aiello said. "There is going to be some cost shifting and the city could not give us data on how much that cost would be. They waited to the last minute but ran out of time."

The state deadline for communities switching to the GIC is Monday and no additional negotiating sessions have been scheduled.

Terms of both the city's proposal and the union counter-proposal have not been released, but officials on both sides have said the state plans generally have lower premiums and some higher out-of-pocket expenses.

Aiello said the unions wanted information calculating out-of-pocket expenses for the average worker.

Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who pushed for the GIC, yesterday said the city had not waited until the last minute to bring the plan to workers and union leadership was responsible for not informing the rank and file employees what was going on.

She said her administration had asked the Health Insurance Advisory Committee, the predecessor of the union group now negotiating, to consider the GIC as early as February, but that details of the plan appeared to have never made it to workers.

"The (Kirk) administration left the employee-wide meeting with the impression that the leaders of the individual unions and their paid representatives did not inform and educate them about the GIC — something that the administration had been calling for since February 2008, but which needs to go through union channels in order to implement," Kirk said in a memo to City Council released yesterday.

"The position of the administration is that the municipal employees are not to blame for this situation, and furthermore, that the employees should hold their union leaders accountable for their handling of it," the Kirk memo said.

Gov. Deval Patrick first touted the idea of allowing cities and towns to join the GIC as a way for communities to slow the rising cost of health insurance by taking advantage of the state's bargaining power to negotiate better deals with insurance companies. The Legislature passed a bill opening up the GIC to communities in 2007, but required them to gain the approval of 70 percent of union members.

The GIC offers 10 health insurance plans for active employees and seven for retirees. Retired Gloucester public school teachers would not have been affected by the switch.

Currently, city employees pay 25 percent of health insurance premiums with the city picking up 75 percent. Neither side would say how that breakdown would change in any of the proposals on the table.

Gloucester now spends around $9 million a year on employee health insurance.

Although accounts differ on when city employees were first approached about the GIC, the group of union representatives took their first legal step toward joining it Nov. 5, when they voted to form a communal bargaining unit, called a Public Employee Committee, that would be responsible for negotiating health insurance terms collectively for all 16 unions. It was that new 17-member Employee Committee that failed to reach a deal with the city Monday.

Moving quickly after the Employee Committee was formed, City Council approved the same section of the state law regarding the GIC on Nov. 18 and Kirk held a meeting Nov. 19 to answer questions about the proposal for all city employees.

Aiello said yesterday that the unions and Employee Committee were still open to negotiating the GIC if Gloucester's legislative delegation could somehow extend the deadline.

Kirk said the city would "continue productive discussions on saving money on health insurance," even if it meant looking at plans other than the GIC.

City Councilor Jason Grow yesterday called the failure of the unions and city to reach a deal on the GIC a "missed opportunity."

"It seems to me like the benefits were not clearly articulated clearly enough and early enough to make a decision," Grow said. "There is blame that can go on both sides of the argument. If the union membership felt they weren't informed enough, I am sensitive to that — but there is also a certain responsibility to be self-informed."

Patrick Anderson can be reached at panderson@gloucestertimes.com.