DiMasi favors no union approval of health insurance plan
By Robert Aicardi
Mon Dec 15, 2008, 01:30 PM EST
Braintree - Braintree is among the communities that could be affected by House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi’s wish to strip labor unions of their collective bargaining power in health insurance decisions.
DiMasi, who said on Dec. 8 that local aid could be cut from five to 10 percent in the upcoming fiscal year, intends to introduce legislation that would allow cities and towns to join the state-run health insurance plan without union approval.
“I’m a little blown away right now,” said Christine Giacomozzi, vice president of the Braintree Education Association, when she heard about DiMasi’s plan.
At present, state law mandates a city or town to obtain at least a 70 percent approval from its union members before it can join the Group Insurance Commission (GIC), which provides health insurance and other benefits for more than 294,000 state employees and select other groups.
All 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts, plus 13 regional planning agencies, 61 charter schools, and 55 regional school districts are eligible to join the GIC, but only 17 cities and towns and 10 regional school districts and planning councils have done so.
According to DiMasi, the legislation he is proposing could save municipalities hundreds of millions of dollars, preserve jobs, and prevent property tax increases, but Robert Joseph, the president of the Braintree Police Patrolmen’s Club, is among union leaders who are opposed to it.
“The whole reason we have collective bargaining is so we can work out what’s best for the town and employees, which we’ve been doing at this time,” he said. “Just take democracy out of our hands, why don’t you.”
On the other hand, Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, applauded DiMasi’s efforts and said that unions are grasping onto an “outdated level of authority” that reinforces inefficiency.
“I think what the speaker did is recognize that collective bargaining with unions is a major block for cities and towns to modernize their health care program,” he said.
“I’m refraining from making any public utterances associated with the GIC for the time being,” Braintree Mayor Joseph Sullivan said.
Because Sullivan and town employees could not come to an agreement before Dec. 1, Braintree won’t enroll, starting in July, in the GIC.
Joseph is the chairman of Brantree’s Public Employee Committee (PEC), consisting of a representative from each of the 13 unions and a retiree representative.
The PEC repudiated the tentative agreement reached on Sept. 23 that failed to obtain the required consent of 70 percent of employees, citing what it regarded as better agreements that other cities and towns reached with those who work for them.
Weymouth, Quincy, Melrose, Watertown, Wenham, Stoneham, Weston, Pittsfield, Norwood, and Randolph negotiated deals with their unions to join the GIC, as required under the Municipal Partnership Law that took effect in July, 2007.
Joseph and Sullivan expressed disappointment after negotiations did not lead to an agreement acceptable to both sides.
“Hopefully, we can work out some kind of deal next year,” Joseph said.
“This is an issue that cannot wait until fiscal year 2011,” Sullivan said. “We need savings in fiscal year 2010, which begins July 1.”
The PEC, Joseph said, is “committed to working with the mayor’s office to make changes that will not only provide cost savings to the town, but also true cost savings to employees that will not be eaten up by higher co-payments.”
According to Sullivan, the final six-year plan that he offered to join the GIC was “fair to all employees and financially sustainable to the town” and would have provided “real dollar savings” toward the rising cost of health insurance.
“I care about all town employees, but my concern extends to the taxpayers as well,” he said.
Chief of Staff and Operations Peter Morin spoke about the future.
“We’ll be looking at any alternative to reduce health costs, whether it means approaching unions to look at co-payments or looking at alternative providers,” he said. “The alternatives we will be exploring will not provide the benefits and savings that the GIC would have provided. Nonetheless, we’re going to explore them.”
Joseph recalled that the PEC submitted a new proposal to Sullivan after employees did not approve the tentative agreement.
“We estimated that the proposal we sent to the mayor would have saved the town about $3 million in the first three years,” he said. “In addition, because we made a six-year proposal, the savings would have grown to several more million over the following three years, based on the suggestion by the mayor’s office that our present plans could increase by an average of 13.5 percent a year. We estimated the potential savings to the town over the six years to be in the neighborhood of $12 million.”
This proposal would have brought the town’s contribution “closer to, but still less than many of, these communities and would have assured that our members would save enough on the premiums to cover the dramatically higher co-payments of the state plan,” Joseph concluded.
Sullivan said, “We originally started with a three-year discussion that expanded to a six-year agreement as an outline. In the end, the town was offering a proposal that three out of every four dollars saved on health care costs would have gone to employees, and the town would have saved enough money to absorb the anticipated local aid cut.”
The mayor argued that it was “intellectually dishonest” to make a comparison between Braintree and other communities like Quincy.
“The fact is that most other communities are increasing their share of the cost to 10 to 12 percent,” he said. “In Braintree with our proposal, we were up to over 18 percent by the end of the agreement.”
Material from GateHouse News Service was used in this story.
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