- 27 jurisdictions have agreed to be insured through the GIC. They include Melrose, Pittsfield, Quincy, Springfield and Weymouth.
- 62 locals were involved in GIC activity. Thirty-five percent of those conversations were initiated by both parties, 44 percent by the unions and only 21 percent by the employer.
- MTA paid for research comparing the costs and benefits of current plans with those offered by the GIC in 65 percent of these communities.
- In communities where no agreement was reached, the reasons varied. The most often cited reasons were: no savings or insufficient savings in 23 percent of the communities, inability to agree on how to split the savings in 14 percent and the lack of a Blue Cross/Blue Shield offering by the GIC in 16 percent.
- In the past three years, 65 other MTA locals have negotiated cost savings in health insurance in other ways. These include changing the plan design to increase co-pays and/or deductibles for employees and having employees pay a higher percentage of the total premium while the community pays a smaller one.
- The GIC does not work for every municipality. An analysis of the potential savings needs to be done community by community, and then an agreement on a fair distribution of the savings needs to be reached.
- In some communities, cost savings can be achieved by negotiating with other carriers that offer rates competitive to those of the GIC. [For example, 34 municipalities in Hampshire, Franklin, and Hampden County use the Hampshire Group Insurance Trust].
- The [MTA] survey suggests that nearly half of our locals saw less than 6 percent increases in the cost of insurance in 2008, while 23 percent saw increases of 7 percent to 9 percent.
“Clearly, having the GIC as an option for communities has contributed to a more competitive municipal health insurance market.”
Please share widely!
Find myself reacting to the phrase ‘fair distribution’… If I’m understanding this correctly-that in some towns public employee unions are attempting to negotiate a share of the savings from joining the GIC- my reaction is not positive (and when unions start losing the support of lefties like me, they should be concerned). Most folks in the private sector already do not enjoy the level of benefits – health insurance, pension, time off – that they fund through their taxes for public employees, and certainly market conditions in the private sector at present are not supporting increases in wages and benefits. ‘Fair’ would be supporting moves like joining the GIC that can save communities money while still providing employees comparable benefits. Attempting to exploit the situation to get more strikes me not as seeking fairness, but as greedy and out of touch.
Public employees aren’t “exploiting the situation”. They’re being asked to give back money. They’re being asked to pay higher copays, deductibles, etc.
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p>So it’s neither surprising nor unreasonable for them to say: if there is a savings here, since we’re paying for it, give us a share of it.
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p>If agreement is reached then there’s savings for both parties.
But health insurance costs are going up. Co-pays, deductibles etc. are going up for those in the private sector. I don’t see why public employees should be an exception, or should be furnished a higher level of benefits than their private sector counterparts.
are getting screwed, public employees should agree to also get screwed? I think your ire is misdirected. We should change the system so no employees get screwed.
If gas prices are going up then we will all pay more for gas and public employees should not get a special benefit which the average taxpayer is not getting. It’s time for the sacred cow of public employee benefits to be slain.
What? You don’t want public employees to have benefits? Or just the ones you approve of, like the hourly flogging program?
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p>The benefits these public employees now get are not “special” except in comparison to those private-sector employees who did not have the foresight to organize. Some of those disorganized workers are now outraged that the organized ones are getting some benefit from speaking with one voice. Instead of accepting the corporate viewpoint that unions are an Evil Distortion Of The Free Market and blaming workers who’ve availed themselves of their right to collective action, maybe we should ALL organize, so we’d have the power to obtain reasonable benefits for ourselves.
The power to be related or connected to a politician? So you approve of the MBTA 23 and out pension rules? You like the legislature passing bills with people getting retirement credit for their years working as a volunteer on a library board?
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p>By sacred cow benefits I mean the ones which are out of whack with the rest of society. State workers (teachers…) deserve average/nominal benefits, nothing more, nothing less. GIC should be mandated when appropriate as judged by a board of unbiased people.
Because I think unions are generally a good and necessary counterbalance to the amoral imperatives of corporations, I must endorse every single thing that any union has ever done! How could it be otherwise?
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p>I suppose you’re never going to admit that it’s “the rest of society” that’s out of whack, and that we all deserve those “sacred cow benefits.” I can only guess where you’ll find your board of unbiased people.
Do you think that “we” all deserve to have everything? Who exactly pays for everything since we will all be getting everything?
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p>You have your perspective (totally unbiased I’m sure) and I have mine. Unions suck and I will continue to see them as evil. The deeper we go into “reform” in state government (including the Authorities, unions…) the more apparent wil become the imbalance that has occurred between hard working folks in the private industry and well… the rest.
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p>As for the unbiased board… I’m sure I could find 2 or 3 more people besides myself.
you unbiased old union-hater! It’s so wonderful that you have this talent for putting words in my mouth! I think unions can help workers, so I must “approve of the MBTA 23 and out pension rules,” and “like the legislature passing bills with people getting retirement credit for their years working as a volunteer on a library board.” I think people deserve better health benefits, so I must “think that “we” all deserve to have everything.” It’s just so awesome! Where did you take your mind-reading training?
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p>I am also sure that you could find 2 or 3 people as unbiased as yourself. The lot of you would not, however, make up “a board of unbiased people.”
Took all the kids ice skating yesterday and none of them could touch me.
public health costs and deductibles are already going up – maybe not quite significantly, but still by a lot, just like everyone else.
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p>You’re asking unions to agree to allow it to go up an additional amount, by quite a bit, without any competition. The whole point of having a union is to protect employees. If only more of us had unions, perhaps our benefits wouldn’t be going down quite as steeply either! (But all the same, they’d still be taking a dive anyway.)
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p>So, they’re already no exception.
Savings on premiums was roughly $6 million/year. We negotiated $5 million for the community and $1 million for us. Why?
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p>Copayments are significantly higher. If you’ve had no hospital admission deductible and now you have $300, you lose in the exchange as soon as you go to the hospital. Comparable insurance plans are rarely as comparable as they seem at first sight. Prescription costs are higher…note that all the added costs fall on the employee. The employer gains are fixed. Now, Mr. Burbs is correct that gains could have been maximized if employees had been screwed worse. After all, he’s been screwed, right? Rather than form a union, many private sector types simply take the loss; so now he demands that unions take that loss.
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p>The City needed the improvement and health insurance is a subject of bargaining. The sight (rather frequent here on BMG these days) of alleged progressives urging the disempowerment of employees is quite worrisome for those of us trying be both progressive and labor friendly.
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p>Our entry into the GIC turned out be a win-win. The City benefits and the employees get some benefit as well, especially those of us who live in the city. Please note how many here want employees to lose. It’s not a pretty sight. And when they say that because they lost, it’s misdirected.
You mentioned a $300 hospital deductible… was there no deductible on the previous insurance coverage? You also mentioned higher prescription costs but can you be specific? I’m trying to understand if I am on the “old” coverage and now have the “new” coverage, how much more money will leave my pocket at the end of the year (knowing each family situation will be different)?
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p>I would also prefer a win-win scenario.
Insurance has a fixed price until you use it. We had a $0 copayment for hospital admission. We had a $25 ER copayment. As I say, ANYONE can have those copayments if they are willing to make it up in premiums. So now it’s a $300 hospital admission. It’s $0 if I never go into the hospital and it’s $1200 if use the hospital four times in different quarters…per person, so if my spouse or kid has an admission, I pay again. Compare that to $0.
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p>Scrip copays were $5/10/25 for the three tiers. The new tiers are variable by plan chosen within the GIC, but usually $10/25/50. Again, you win the LESS you use your health insurance. If you have, say five pills per day, you can be paying out HUNDREDS per month. And, again, co-payments are completely fungible (seems to be a BMG word) in that costs come out of premiums PLUS copays…you want a low copay? Raise your premiums. Employers obviously want higher copayments, shifting costs onto employees. Actually, right now it’s a double whammy, employers want increased premium splits AND higher copayments.
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p>I’m glad you want a win win. There’s significant chatter out here that employees didn’t lose enough.
they’re often giving things up — more expensive premiums, deductibles, etc. They should be getting something back in return – the most obvious being a share of the savings to make up for the loss in benefits.
First, thanks Yellow Dog for the effort. Admittedly there are a lot of “in the weeds” details that regualr folks (non-municipal officials / non-union officials) just won’t spend the time to learn.
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p>Interestingly, Boston.com has a story just today about 4 North Shore communities asving $3 million by joining GIC and another trying to unjoin and save $200,000. Also, the MTA claims 27 “jurisdictions” have joined, but the Globe article says only 17, so I’m even more confused. But the bottom line is there are more than 300 cities and towns in the state and it’s clear (to me) that the 70% vote makes this a non-starter in many communities.
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p>Given that my teacher’s union just voted down the GIC plan (which would have saved our system $500,000) I take with a grain of salt the MTA’s contention that the union is often bringing this idea to the communities. (Even by their numbers, 62 “locals” are involved with looking at GIC, a pathetic #, given the budget cuts we are facing.)
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p>Bottom-line is I admittedly don’t know the details of how a state GIC health insurance program is different than the local programs. But my sense is that it involves different co-pays, different deductables and maybe switching doctors. But the co-pays and deductables can’t be huge differences and, given the GIC plans cover thousands of state employees living in every city and town in MA, I have to figure the # of people that would ahve to switch doctors to be tiny if not non-existant.
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p>Is there anyone that has any insight into the different plans and why folks aren’t jumping on this ban wagon (other that the selfish reasons of wanting to take the saving and roll it into pay increases that BEan in the Burbs points out)?
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p>- We’ve tried to illuminate some of the concerns about transfers of costs by putting together a website — http://www.gicestimator.com — that lets municipal employees enter their current level of healthcare utilization (visits, prescriptions, etc.) then see how they would fare on both premium and out-of-pocket costs.
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p>It’s operative for Westwood and Revere right now, with at least one more community coming shortly. I encourage you to give it a try to get an idea of what the GIC coverage looks like.
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p>Its clear to me that certain communities don’t gain an advantage from joining the GIC. But it’s vital that communities understand if and how GIC might save them money. And in many cases, employees get a better deal too.
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p>The website simply presents individualized data on costs. I encourage you to try it out.
The GIC is just not a good deal for some communities particularly the further south and west you get from Boston. For example, it’s far more easier to find a convenient specialist if you live in Newton than it is Wareham.
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p>Instead of the state thinking GIC-GIC-GIC constantly, it needs to look at the Hampshire and Plymouth county collabortaives that havebeen set up. Those plans are crafted around the local needs. All they want is the same ability GIC has to set deductibles, amend plans, etc.
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p>But once again the state is in this one-size-fits-all mentality and refuses to think about anything beyond GIC
Also, the MTA claims 27 “jurisdictions” have joined, but the Globe article says only 17, so I’m even more confused…Mr. Skeffington
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p>Jurisdictions are eligible units for GIC. Triton Regional Vocational School is one. If it enters the GIC, that counts, but it isn’t a “community.” Clearer?
…the problem is giving the local officials the same power as the state has to shape the plan benefits without negotiating. The state board that runs the GIC has three state appointees and two labor. They do not have to negotiate plan design and management has majority say over decisions.
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p>The Mass Municipal Association has a proposal to give the cities and towns the same authority to craft plans without negotiations as long as the resulting plans do not disadvantage employees more than the GIC. This would solve lots of problems not the least of which is the incompatibility between the GIC and community/employee needs.
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p>One reason many communities do not want to join the GIC is because the GIC programs do not include options from BC/BS such as the HMO. The BCBS HMO which has been the program of choice to save money for employees seeing cost shifts as types of “savings”. As such employees will choose the more expensive PPO plans which will cut into or eliminate any savings from the shift. Another reason that people have rejected the GIC option is that oftentimes the retiree programs are more expensive than those available under BCBS.
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p>I would guess in some of the cases where there was difficulty in coming to agreement on splitting the savings the issue comes from the known cost shift based on increased copays, deductibles, covered services and the like. The whole structure of these discussions is to shift costs from the town to the employees.
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p>By joining the GIC employees will be paying significantly more money out of pocket for health care than under the current scenario (whatever that is for the city or town). The negotiations need to occur in some context…we will save $XXX and in return we give back $YYY or save so many jobs. It is very fashionable to trash public employees (not sure when it isn’t in fashion) but these folks aren’t idiots…if they give it all away now…what happens next year or the next time there is a fiscal crisis?
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p>There is much more…but this comment is way too long.
You take a job, and you get the benefits the firm’s plan offers – assuming it offers one.
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p>Just sayin’.
in the private sector. Damn pesky these things called facts.
My work experience has been in a small S-corp, a high tech start up, and then multiple companies in the insurance and financial services industries. None unionized. My point remains: I’m seeing a disconnect between what benefits most taxpayers enjoy and the benefits expected by the public employee unions. I’m not finding myself in sympathy with the unions, which is not where I’d usually expect myself to be. I’d rather force entry into the GIC and expect union members to contribute a little more (if in fact it would cost them more; don’t know that that’s necessarily the case) to rising healthcare costs, as the rest of us are, than see layoffs and decimation of human service programs. Let me be clear that I’m not opposed to new revenues to help with the equation – I’d support a gas tax, local option taxes, a higher income tax – but I do think that the public employee unions need to calibrate their expectations.
I agree that public employees should not enjoy benefits greater than most taxpayers enjoy. Private sector employees should get the same (or better) health insurance benefits, and they should organize(and some have) to get them.
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p>But the main point is that all of us should (and could) have affordable health insurance. It doesn’t help the cause to take it from some because others don’t have it.
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p>It’s the unequal distribution of income in our society that pits worker benefits against social programs.
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p>Another more practical point, as Yellow Dog states further down, is that benefits are only one aspect of the compensation package. Traditionally public employees are lighter on wages and heavier on benefits.
And I’d like to see fairer distribution of income – we could start by raising the top marginal federal income tax rate. But neither solves this year’s budget crisis in Massachusetts.
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p>The business about the lower salaries is something I often hear from teachers and others, but I’m not sure I buy it. Police don’t make less than security guards, I suspect. I doubt teachers do worse than corporate trainers or test prep tutors, if wages are adjusted to reflect the same hours per year.
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p>And I worry whether the pie is big enough to afford everyone a bigger slice, even if we were able to address the distribution issues.
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p>Police officers have far more training, more skills, higher stress, and higher risk than security guards, I suspect.
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p>
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p>I doubt corporate trainers or test prep tutors have more training, more skills, higher stress, or higher risk than teachers, if wages are adjusted to reflect the same hours per year.
You’re undoubtedly correct. When security guard jobs require the level of training and carry powers of arrest, you may begin to have a point. Until that happens, you might as well be complaining that the Red Sox roster is paid more than the Lowell Spinners are.
And when teachers have to work 50 weeks a year, you might have a point. Are you advocating year-round school? Also, you might be surprised at how much technical trainers get paid.
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p>Full disclosure: I work in the private sector. I have health insurance with a big deductible, and supplemental insurance that pays most of the deductible. In the end, it pays a very large percentage of my health costs. It’s still a pain in the ass, because of the insurance companies. The people who work for health insurance companies should find productive employment somewhere.
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p>There isn’t a week that’s gone by in which my father’s worked less than 60 hours, with the exception of vacations, as a history teacher. And that’s just for teaching. Yes, he was only at work from 8-2:30 teaching history, but he was at home working anywhere from 7pm – 2am correcting hundreds upon hundreds of tests and exams every term. Add to that his responsibilities as a 3 sport coach, then as an Athletic Director, and he found himself “at work” from 8am to 10pm most evenings, maybe sneaking away for an hour or two during the day if he was lucky. And his coaching responsibilities kept him busy all summer long, despite the fact that he wasn’t paid all summer long.
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p>He’s always done reasonably well as a teacher who’s been that busy, but if you compared his salary to the amount of hours he works then it probably wouldn’t look so great. Teachers who do less make less, but still have all those pesky papers and lesson plans to create, classes to prepare for and other assorted tasks. If you look at “adjusting” the hours a teacher has to make their salaries look sane, adjust up — because they work way more than from 8 to 2:30.
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p>Finally, I can’t believe you compared teachers to test prep tutors! What a low opinion of teachers! A teacher has to complete a 4 year education, specializing in some sort of field enabling them to teach, then they (usually) need to assist in the classroom for some experience, then they need to get a masters degree in education within a modest time frame. The only requirement my LSAT test prep tutor had was to do really well on his LSAT when he took it. That would be the equivalent of handing a HS senior the reigns to a class he or she aced. If we did that, we could really save some money — but the education would be crap. That works when all you have to do is teach someone to a test — not so much when you want to teach them how to be a functioning, thinking, not-mindless adult who’s ready to contribute to society.
Than their private sector counterparts. To test that, we’d need to compare positions that utilize similar skills and background. Do you have better analogs in the private sector for teachers than tutors and trainers? Going back some years, I recall that private school teachers often earned less than teachers in the public system. How about police? In the business world, pay is generally benchmarked against the market for similar positions. If the argument is true that public employees earn less, canceling out their comparitively more generous benefits, it should be easy to point to some comparable private sector jobs to teachers, police, etc. that are higher paid.
On thinking about it, I think the concept of trading benefits for pay is one rooted in a different time. There was a time when health insurance was relatively cheap and it was easier for governments to give people time off and health insurance than money.
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p>And I don’t think the comparison was between similar positions in the public and private sector. I think it originally was between a non-professonal service job (public) vs a non-professional manufacturing job (private). The service sector wasn’t a place you would go if your goal was a good salary. And there used to be manufacturing jobs.
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p>Now of course we have much more of a low wage service sector economy than we used to have. So public sector jobs look better.
That’d be during WWII wage controls. Since different jobs from different firms all had the same cap, benefits was the discriminator that allowed firms compete to attract labor.
You’ve written some thoughtful stuff here and, while I disagree, I do find them to be important points for us all to discuss. But I must seriously question your statement that you are a lefty. At the very least, you don’t seem familiar with the labor movement’s role in both the public and private sectors and you may want to rethink that description of yourself. I honestly say this with all due respect.
1) Do we have to make this thread about Bean in the Burbs as a person and not about the GIC?
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p>2) Who appointed you or anyone else the arbiter of whether someone gets to consider themselves a ‘lefty’ or not?
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p>I probably shouldn’t have waded into this, but this kind of purity troll BS really makes me upset.
and my reply was too personal. But I was really struck by the incongruity between one person’s description of themselves and their discussion of the role and consequences of unionization. That’s where I was coming from.
Old-school lunch pail Democrats — think Ted Kennedy — would respond to that statement by saying that’s a powerful argument for stronger unionization in the private sector.
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p>New-school Democrats — think Joe Lieberman — love anyone who leans toward that kind of union-busting logic.
We didn’t support the same presidential candidate, I wasn’t in favor of the Iraq war, and I’m an atheist and skeptical of values politics. The resemblance is striking. How perceptive of you.
I was just trying to think of a prominent Democrat as hostile toward unions as your comment implies. Blanche Lincoln, maybe?
I know what you mean, but it is incongruously funny. Ted has probably never seen, let alone eat out of a lunchbox.
like he eats out of two or three every day!
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p>
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p>ba dum bum
But you are right; he has certainly supported the “working guy” during his career.
How is that working for America?
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p>I don’t understand why so many people make this an us-vs.-them thing.
I guess my point in this post is that the GIC is neither simple nor easy to implement for communities. Certainly, it is more complex than Sal DiMasi gave it credit for.
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p>When it comes time to negotiate, every union local has an existing relationship with its employer. It’s impossible for us to know, beyond anecdote, the history of negotiations and the nature of that relationship. Perhaps some portion of raises were foregone in favor of preserving health care. Perhaps an employer’s intentions are and have been less than fair. Every contract represents a particular situation.
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p>As I’ve said, there are also existing health insurance trusts. My home community, for example, belongs to the Hampshire County Insurance Trust. My employer community belongs to another health insurance trust. Both of these trusts pre-date the ability of teachers to participate in the GIC.
…state law requires negotiation. Why be upset with unions when they negotiate? Why expect them to change behavior when it isn’t in their financial interest to do so? How do you think the insurance providers…MIAA, GIC, self-insured…whatever save money? By shifting costs to the workers. If the city or town is saving $1,000,000 who is at risk in the transaction? Not the city or town, they are saving money…presumably the insurance company has done its actuarial assumtions and is somewhat protected…so that leaves the workers.
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p>Please remember they read the same newspapers the rest of us do and they see the stories about library trustees gaming the pension system, legislators feathering their nests and Marian Walsh…they also want to see “reform”.
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p>As one commentator already wrote…the public sector unions have traditionally traded wages for better benefits.
I certainly don’t blame public unions for getting the best deal for themselves they can. I do think, though, that there is a structural problem particular to public unions. Suppose you had two unions, one public, one private, that said to themselves, “how can we get as much as possible for doing as little as possible?” Both engage in collective bargaining with their employers. In the private sector, I do think that there are some weird incentives that can cause both sides to want, e.g., to push costs into the future, even if that’s not in the best long-term interests of the business. But at least in the private sector, there is someone, namely the shareholders, with an incentive to pursue efficiency for the sake of profit. In the public sector, elected officials are interested in earning votes, not profit, and the public unions, I think, are a big part of the politically active base here. So the elected officials may have a perverse incentive against efficiency and productivity.
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p>Of course, in the end, all the voters, not just union members, elect politicians. Which is why I think stories like this one from today’s Globe are so odd. After the House eliminated funding for the Quinn Bill, which gives police officers up to a 25% pay raise for having a master’s degree or a law degree, seems so short-sighted on the union’s part. To the average citizen, myself included, this seems like a ridiculous, porky perk. Should I feel safer when the police officers in my neighborhood are also lawyers? The union, however, was quickly able to gain the support of the majority of House members to reverse the cuts in toto–a really amazing feat, if you consider our dire budget straits. Is the union not concerned about a popular backlash?
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p>TedF
Suppose you had two unions, one public, one private, that said to themselves, “how can we get as much as possible for doing as little as possible?” Both engage in collective bargaining with their employers.—ted F
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p>Did you actually SAY that?
Honest to Gawd, is that what you think we do?
Are there unions out there positively asking to work longer hours for the same pay, or asking for a decrease in pay without a corresponding decrease in work?
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p>I’ve just engaged in a little Econ. 101 thought experiment to try to show what I think are the different incentives for public unions versus private unions. Tell me why I’m wrong!
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p>TedF
It leaves out motives other than economic self-interest. There are lazy people in all lines of work but I think by and large teachers, cops, health care and other human service workers take their jobs and responsibilities seriously. They just want to get paid for them.
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p>That said, the analysis is interesting. Is profit a better indicator of socially desirable “efficiency” than votes?
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p>I think the real advocates for “efficiency” who should have a seat at the collective bargaining table are those that use the services provided by the employees: students, families, representatives of the various communities that receive services etc.
I think you and pablophil maybe got caught up in the way I phrased my point. How about this: the union tries to maximize compensation per unit of work done. That’s equivalent, and it has no connotation of laziness or whatever. I don’t think union members or any other workers are lazy. I do think that if the union said, “let’s settle for less than we can get per unit of work,” union members would be understandably upset. Is there anything wrong with this formulation, and if not, am I right about the incentives in public and private unions?
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p>TedF
“I don’t think union members or any other workers are lazy.”
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p>Are you serious or just afraid to say something which may piss off a few people? There are lazy worlers all over the place, union and non-union, public and private. Are you blind?
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p>”I do think that if the union said, “let’s settle for less than we can get per unit of work,” union members would be understandably upset. Is there anything wrong with this formulation, and if not, am I right about the incentives in public and private unions?”
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p>I think you’re right when you say “union members would not want a pay decrease, who would. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen or it isn’t right. Do you really believe Toll Takers on the Pike deserve $53K/year (minimum) with some making almost $100K for taking tolls (essentially a cashier’s job at Stop and Shop? If you are going to say the job of a toll taker sucks and they deserve the money, would you also explain why tho jobs are cherries which only go to well connected individuals. I myself know about 6 guys who have been trying for years to get one of those jobs with no luck. Just because a union worker doesn’t want a change to happen (23 and out) doesn’t make it wrong and the union leadership will be greedy to the bitter end.
Are there unions out there positively asking to work longer hours for the same pay, or asking for a decrease in pay without a corresponding decrease in work? –TedF
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p>We have added, in the last ten years, three evening meetings, 20 hours of required professional development outside of the school day, and adjusted the work time to fit “Time and Learning” regulations from the state. Were there raises in that time? Sure, but not one of them was EVER done as a quid pro quo; and I can’t say with anyt honesty that our raises would (could) have been less had we not given more time. It happens.
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p>And constantly the work increases with no pay increase. The only contract I know that deals with that is one South Shore City that actually has a provision that says, translated, “If you put something more on my plate you must remove something else.” I know I’d KILL for such a provision!
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p>Precisely. You’d take it if you could get it. That’s all I’m saying. It seems to me that you are trying to turn lemons into lemonade by pointing to lack of bargaining power–the union has had to accept work increases without getting pay increases–as a sign that the union is interested in something other than maximizing compensation per unit of work.
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p>TedF
You’re right that unions are interested in maximizing compensation per unit of work. But note that workers have other motivations that cause them to organize as well. Much negotiation time is spent on “non-economic” items such as respect on the job, fair work rules, safe working conditions and a voice in how things happen.
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p>And human service workers (among others) often actually care about what they do and want work to be structured so that they can be successful at providing their service.
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p>As for the incentives of politicians, it’s clear that unions support politicians who may be favorable toward them in bargaining.
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p>I’m not sure that’s a bias against “efficiency” or “productivity”, except in the technical sense that anything less than getting the most done for the cheapest wage is a “bias against efficiency”. If so, it begs the question of whether “efficiency” is always the right value.
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p>Politicians (and anyone else) who support unions are making a value judgement (implicitly if not explicitly)about what is the best distribution of resources.
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p>That’s a fair point, and I’m sure it’s true. And I am sure that most employees in any line of work want to do their jobs well.
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p>
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p>Well, that’s interesting, and maybe now we are getting to the heart of the matter. Except insofar as I am a shareholder in a particular corporation, or except insofar as I want American business, writ large, to do well, I don’t much care how private enterprise chooses to divide its money between shareholders, managers, and other employees. But I do care very much that the public maximizes the efficiency of its tax dollars. If the goal is redistributive, it would be much more straightforward and efficient to redistribute money from rich to poor through a progressive income tax.
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p>TedF
I agree that maximizing the efficiency of tax dollars is important. And that an elected official should represent this public interest when negotiating with unions.
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p>And I agree that a politician could conspire with a group of workers to pay them well at the expense of everyone else, in return for political support. Just as they could do with businesses or any other economic interest.
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p>But that doesn’t mean that a politician can’t support unions and still maintain the public interest. You can believe that workers should be paid more for what they are doing and have a goal of finding a way to do it. And you could be right.
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p>Maximizing efficiency doesn’t necessarily mean paying workers as little as possible. Depending on the circumstances it could mean paying them less, the same or more.
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p>And there are other important considerations regarding compensation, such as fairness.
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or other gems like this “… joining the GIC employees will be paying significantly more money out of pocket for health care than under the current scenario…”
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p>Well, how about some facts. Does anyone know the facts of Stoneham or other towns which have switched? What are the before and after facts? My town is in discussions with the union about GIC and so far the union wants all discussions to be “secret” in executive sessions. The reason we’re hearing this is because the average Joe would be pissed off the hear wrangling over their $5 prescription copay… that’s right a $5 copay.
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p>I want to know specifics on what savings the town would reap and what “significantly more money out of pocket (union workers)” really means? This is clearly a case of unions not wanting to change what they have or give up “anything”.
this is wholly an individual thing.
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p>If a town employee’s family is relatively healthy and lucky throughout the year, they’ll probably save money, assuming they pick one of the cheaper insurance options available in GIC. If they aren’t, they’ll pay more. If they select a better insurance option, they’ll pay more. I don’t have the numbers with me, but I read a lot about this when my town ultimately chose to go GIC. From what I read, that was the gist of it: for most, this is a slight cost savings. For a few, this will be a large, new expense that could cost some families hundreds or thousands.
I haven’t followed the effects of GIC on Stoneham, but it’s here for the searching. Here’s one post.
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p>As far as negotiations go, executive sessions for negotiations are permitted by open meeting law. That works for management’s benefit as well as for workers.
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Heck there can be NO copayment It’s all made up in the premium cost. There are plenty of public employees splitting premiums 50-50 with a $5 copayment for scrips.
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p>Do you object to that?
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p>A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
But in my town the workers pay a very small percentage of the healthcare premiums AND pay $5 copayment.
You want to change that? Bargain it.
We had $5 copayments and 90-10 splits for the HMO. Now we’re in the GIC (as of July 1) and the City saves…and we save too, as long as we don’t use the insurance much.