Somehow I missed this, and it seems rather under-reported, but this is a big deal: DiMasi is saying (again) that municipal leaders should have “the sole decision” in deciding whether muni employees enter the Group Insurance Commission, the state's negotiator of health care plans for its employees:
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill to allow municipalities to enroll their workers in the state health care system, the Group Insurance Commission.
Instead of premium increases as high as 20 to 30 percent, the GIC has seen single-digit percent increases on average the last five years.
Cities and towns can benefit from this by joining the GIC and they should.
In addition, we passed pension reform which, combined with the health care reform, could have saved cities and towns hundreds of millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, we have not seen cities and towns take advantage of these reforms.
I believe that municipal leaders want to join GIC because they also believe that they can provide savings and good health care for municipal workers.
I also believe that municipal leaders should have the sole decision in determining whether their communities join GIC and deliver on the promise of property tax relief on the local level.
Therefore, I believe it may be time to change the law to allow municipal leaders alone to make this decision.
Run by the formidable Dolores Mitchell, the GIC has continually seen smaller increases in premiums over the last few years, even while health care absolutely destroys municipal budgets all over the state. And last year, Gov. Patrick supported a measure in his MPA that would allow municipal employees to enter the GIC, but only if 70% of the employees agreed. Pretty timid on behalf of the Governor, I thought.
Considering the Commonwealth's fiscal condition, we simply don't have the luxury of being politically sensitive to the muni employees' unions. The firefighters (and others) will hate it, perhaps because of less generous cost-sharing structures, and at least partly because Blue Cross/Blue Shield is not offered in the GIC.
But come on — many of these employees are going to get laid off if health care premiums aren't brought to heel. And BCBS knows where its bread is buttered; how could it not follow all those customers into an arrangement with Ms. Mitchell?
Get it done, Governor.
Update: Amesbury News calls this a “crumb” for cities and towns, but nonetheless a welcome one.
This is more than a crumb, this is the single most effective thing the state gov’t can do for the cities and towns aside from finding a way to print another billion dollars in chapter 70 funding.
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p>Cities and Towns have fairly flat revenue streams and that won’t change anytime soon. Prop 2 1/2 limits us to 2.5% increases on total property tax revenues – that’s below inflation. We can expect, based on recent history about 4% or so increases to the state aid portion of our revenues and spikey from year to year but overall low average growth in revenues from excise tax, fees, etc. This adds up to about 3% revenue growth.
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p>On the other side of the fence we have our cost of living and step raises for our employees, our pension costs and our healthcare costs. Healthcare is increasing the fastest by far out of these groups and curbing that is the single most important thing the state can do for us. The GIC has a great system with a number of optimizations over what we can do for ourselves locally because they have the scale, purchasing power and research faculties to pull it off.
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p>The way the GIC was opened to us last year it had that awful coalition bargaining language attached — not only was it contingent on supposed 70% approval, the approval had to be gained through this silly forum where we got the rep from each union in the same room together, each with a weighted vote (so the teachers rep outweighed all the rest put together) and tried to get them to agree according to a whole bunch of arcane rules. On top of that, we had a window of about 3 weeks to make the decision to sign up or not — far too short a time to digest the rules, educate our unions, and reach some sort of informal agreement that helped everyone prior to handicapping ourselves with the kangaroo court rulebook. So like one town joined, I think it was on the south shore somewhere. Not good enough and it’s very good of the speaker to be bringing this up again — things don’t always work out the first attempt out of a legislature so good for him (and more importantly, all of us) if they can get us a GIC bill without a poison pill attached.
9 cities and towns entered the GIC in collaboration with their unions. The main problem last year was the legislation was not passed until very late in the summer and then some in the legislature somehow expected all the cities and towns and unions to suddenly flock into the GIC without any of the education, legwork or discussion needed to make it happen all by the October deadline. Of the 9 who have done so, reports are favorable. With this success and with a good deal of effort by a variety of organizations, including the unions, there may be a good deal more who sign up for next year.
there’s a lot more to this than you’d think. Some of the plans on the GIC may look good on paper, but have higher copays, etc. that make it so if you’re healthy, it’s good… but not so much if you’re not. Those are the same plans in the GIC that make the GIC look a lot more affordable.
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p>I’m not saying the GIC is a bad idea; in fact, I think it’s a fantastic idea. But it was rushed on the teachers’ unions, who had little time to examine the proposal and vote on its merits… and taking it completely out of there hand is completely anti-union and unfair and I could never get behind that. There are other, better ways we could do it: give them enough time to examine the issue, barter a bit to make sure the GIC plans are up to snuff and maybe lower the threshold from 70% of a union’s support to a simple majority.
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p>Furthermore, this is the same Governor who’s budget includes raising health care costs on the state’s employers. If the teachers were included in the GIC and the Governor got his way, suddenly that streak of single-digit increases is going to end. Fast.
Can someone explain why this issue should be excluded from collective bargaining? Sure, it would result in a huge savings for many cities and towns. But so would cutting agreed-upon contractual raises and eliminating pensions. Why isn’t anyone suggesting that?
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p>It seems as if a city/town wants to shift its employees to a different health care pool, that would be something to negotiate between the union and the city/town. There’s nothing that says that the city/town can’t say “if you don’t make this shift, expect your share of the premium to go up at the same rate as our share”. That would make such a shift more palatable for unions.
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p>It seems to me that unions have a pretty good deal going for themselves, but don’t forget, municipal government agreed to those deals too…
It’s no different. Wages, step increases, insurance plans, employer support, etc…all collectively agreed upon as substantive terms of the various contracts.
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p>Hypocritical to support collective bargaining by public sector unions, but not certain terms of said contracts after the fact.
Cities and towns should be free to bargain with their employees as they see fit. The original GIC proposal mandated accepting a specific coalition bargaining framework that was badly broken according to everyone who’s ever worked with it. Of course health insurance is part of the contract – in Tyngsboro we just negotiated changes in contribution rates with all of our unions in exchange for concessions elsewhere, that’s fine. Most towns, I expect, could even financially justify a small one-time raise to employees in exchange for joining the GIC.
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p>However saying “you’ve gotta bargain this with your employees” is not the same thing as saying bam “here’s a 500 page rulebook stipulating that you get everybody in the same room all at once with their own lawyers and follow these precise byzantine procedures to bargain it”. It’s a game theory nightmare.
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p>Since we don’t really allow teachers or police officers to strike, I absolutely disagree. There’s no recourse for teachers to take if we prevent them from having an equal seat on the bargaining table on all matters of their contracts. Furthermore, I really don’t think there’s anything unfair about most of their contracts: while they may have better-than-average benefits, they’re still not that much better than many people who work in the private sector and certainly teachers aren’t paid the same as private sector workers in many cases, especially when you factor their advanced educational degrees they’re required to have. So, no, teachers deserve an equal seat at the table, or they deserve to be given the same rights as any other union (the ability to strike). If you think teachers are being overcompensated now, imagine how they’d be compensated if they could refuse to show up if they weren’t happy with their contract offer?
There needs to be a balance of power between a union and the “company”. In a private company, the ultimate trump card is the company closing. No union wants that.
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p>There is no such ultimate trump card with a municipality, therefore removing the right to strike brings the situation more in balance. I’d agree that this alone overcompensates, but then again, in a typical union situation, there isn’t extreme political pressure from unions on the decision makers (i.e. elected officials). I think this overcompensates in the other direction, resulting in the fairly generous deals that municipal unions have been receiving over the years.
The G.I.C. legislation is just an example of the State trying to save the Town from itself.
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p>The Town negotiated, presumably, in good faith the various health contracts, which now rage out of control. BTW, the Town also negotitated step increases and pension benefits that also grow faster than revenues.
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p>Then in crisis, because health insurance is expensive, the State steps in and opines that because the costs went up faster than expected, the Town should be able to get out of the bargain?
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p>The problem’s either that the Unions are too smart, or the Town too stupid, and the State has to bail out the stupid town at the expense of the Union employee.
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p>Nopolitician is right, the power of the town v. Union must be better balanced, as in nuke the public sector unions altogether.
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p>Answer me this, if the Commonwealth is so good, tending to its citizens to the exclusion of any profit-motive, what’s the reason for a public sector union to even exist?
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p>That is, if the purpose of the Union is to save the employee from the abuses of the Man, and the Man is the benevolent government isn’t the Union just stickin’ it to himself and us.
You generally have professional labor lawyers who drive all around the state from their boston office doing this every week up against part-time elected officials who are doing this for the first time and will probably be gone by the time any bad effects kick in, anyways. So unless you’ve gotten lucky with particularly good local officials, the unions take the town to the cleaners in the good years and then in the bad years something has to give, whether its layoffs or memoranda of understanding modifying the existing contract.
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p>And I think that towns should be free to pursue enrollment in the GIC and then impact bargain the changes with their unions however they see fit — unions will have the opportunity to grieve things and have the state arbitrate if they so choose or they can stonewall until the current contract runs out — most likely they will see that the town saving money on healthcare means their members save money, esp when layoffs are on the agenda for many towns right now.
The Union and the Town agree on Health plan X.
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p>To save money, the Town opts for Health plan Y. Grounds for a grievance? Sounds like an outright breach.
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p>Why not just refuse to pay the step increases in salary. That’d save money too.
I’m not saying that Towns should have the right to do this by fiat without even consulting with their unions. I’m just saying they should have the right to deal with each union individually and bargain it in the way they want, each union can opt for a concession elsewhere that makes sense for its members. Rather than getting into the coalition bargaining framework which everyone I’ve ever talked to who has used it says it’s a disaster. From what I understand of it, seems like this framework was drawn up by the unions (as in, central SEIU offices in Boston) to make them necessary more than out of any concern for workers.
…I would call it down right self defeating. When I first heard this, it raised a real concern about Deval’s slight of hands…if I remember right, it was part of the overall Municipal Aid Program that included giving local communities the ability to raise hotel and meals tax. Gee, funny, that only required a majority vote…not a 70% vote. It’s crap like that that makes me believe that the Howie Carr’s of the world have a point. It sicken’s me to say that, but Deval is playing games.
is the lack of BCBS. Get that in, or at least make sure there’s another choice that’s both high-quality and non-profit, then it’s done deal.
That would be Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim, both non profit, both highly ranked for quality. Both in the G.I.C.
The governor, should by executive fiat if necessary, put into law that all state. county and municipal employees should be covered by GIC period. The legislature, should back him up. Screw this collective bargaining BS. This miniature fiefdom nonsense must cease. The taxpayers are being bludgeoned to death with local taxes and get a damn poor return for the investment.
Thanks from Speaker DiMasi’s office for the interest in this important issue. The Speaker will be moving to bring this change in the near future and we were encouraged by supportive comments made yesterday by Senate President Murray.
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p>It should be noted that GIC won’t work for every city or town, which is why the Speaker does not want to make it a mandate. But he feels strongly that municipal officials – your mayors, city councils and selectmen – should be the ones making these decisions.
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p>This is a plan that could save cities and towns hundreds of millions of dollars. Why wouldn’t they jump at that chance to fill holes in their budgets or help lift the property tax burden on their residents?
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p>Here’s some backup information provided to us during the GIC debate last year by the Department of Revenue. It may be updated now but this is the most recent link I have. It lists the health care costs by city and town and compares it to GIC the last five years, giving a real sense of just how much your city or town might save.
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p>Take a look here:
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p>http://www.mass.gov/Ador/docs/…
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p>All the best,
David Guarino
Communications Director for Speaker DiMasi
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p>Because they don’t live in the town in which they work. Why should an employee agree to pay higher co-pays so that each taxpayer in the town can get a negligible reduction in tax rate? The total savings in health care budget will be what, a few percent? Now divide that by the number of taxpayers.
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p>Explain again why a town employee should voluntarily agree to less net take home pay? Do you check the 5.85% box?
With the situation most towns are in right now, it’s not so much a potential reduction in tax rate as a reduction in layoffs and pay cuts to union members.
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p>Second, nobody’s saying that unions can’t impact bargain a small pay bump to offset the higher copays, unless I misunderstand the speaker’s proposal.
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p>Third, lower premiums affect the employee’s portion of the healthcare split as well — could very well be bigger for many employees than the copays.
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p>Fourth, those copays are what keep GIC rates low, they have a “grading” system where they judge physicians by a combination of patient satisfaction and ultimate costs to the system. Physicians who run up the bill with unnecessary procedures tend to have a higher co-pay associated with them than physicians who operate more cheaply. It’s artificial injection of incentives into a broken system — certainly not perfect but better than other private or public systems as evidenced by their single-digit inflation.
Doing this i think is right up there with a Reagan-esque way of dealing with unions.
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p>The problem isn’t the unions, it’s the health care costs. Why work so hard to address the symptom and ignore the disease? This is a bandaid approach, at best.
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p>There’s plenty of reasonable ways to a) address health care affordability and b) get unions to join the GIC, but changing the law to take unions out of collective bargaining on health care isn’t one of them. Many of these politicians wouldn’t cross a picket line – they’d have some nerve screwing with the basic principals of the rights of workers to have collective bargaining.
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p>An example of why this is a horrid idea is the very fact that the Governor’s budget includes making huge mandatory increases to state employee’s payments toward their health care. Remind me again how removing collective bargaining for town employees is a good idea..
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p>The better question is why allow it in the first place, if after the fact, the Government is going to ignore the outcome?
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p>First, the Commonwealth, totally rejects capitalism profit from the blood and tears of the working man. Right?
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p>Therefore, if the state–if WE as a collective–reject exploiting employees for profit, and our representatives represent everyone including those employees, why the need for a public sector union? After all, each member has as their boss, you, the benevolent government as their boss?
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p>It’s not like there’re working for the Man.
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p>The health costs are exemplary of the problem: the Town negotiated too sweet a bargain and now it’s costing. Legislature wants to step in and ‘fix’ that contract by forcing the Union into a Health Contract they may not have negotiated for.
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p>What else is wrong with that contract? Step raises too high? Merit raises too high? Pension benefits too high? More? Grievance procedures too lenient?
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p>If the Legislature allow collective bargaining and permits public unions to exist and negotiate, then why should it then intercede on particular points of the contract? i.e. G.I.C.
I’m not against the existence of unions or their right to bargain changes in their health care coverage — I used the words “impact bargaining” in my post, impact bargaining means the town decides it needs to change something in the contract midstream for an overriding reason and the union gets to negotiate concessions elsewhere to make up for it.
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p>What I’m against is the specific “coalition bargaining” framework regarding health insurance which is a goat rodeo. It requires us to get all the unions together at the same time and follow a very specific set of rules where they all put guns to each other’s heads and hold each other hostage. It’s a nightmare, and every Town Counsel, Labor Attorney not working for SEIU, etc will tell you stay away from it at all costs.
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p>So we substantially agree — address the healthcare problem, let the unions continue to operate as they have traditionally operated, they can bargain individually. Having them negotiate as a group where each member has a differently weighted vote and divergent interests is a game theory disaster.
Let’s differentiate between the interests of local unions who want to look out for their memberships and the interests of the headquarters lobbying groups who want to look out for the union head honchos’ interests.
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p>Healthcare coalition bargaining was written for the latter. If it’s less complicated, they aren’t as needed.
If it’s just making each union organize with the town on a separate basis, instead of with the other unions, then I think that would be okay. However, I’m guessing there’s a reason why the process happens to work that way – for example, would a town have enough time/resources to negotiate with all the unions separately? And would a perceived bad deal, compared to a sweet deal from one of the other town unions, cause some kind of backlash during the next union negotiation, and resentment going forward? I just don’t know if there’s any fantastic way of doing this.
It would be much less time to negotiate with them each separately. Coalition bargaining means that the teachers get a vote over police benefits, police over DPW benefits, etc, it’s a nightmare. The only people it helps are SEIU lawyers who all of a sudden are the most important people in the room and now you get to see where that dues money went.
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p>As far as “if there’s any fantastic way”, well, that’s politics. In Tyngsboro we staggered our union contracts to all end in FY08 specifically because we wanted to look at health insurance options — if we hadn’t done that, coalition bargaining would have been even more impossible. As it was, the 3 week window was nowhere near enough to informally consult with our unions and see if they were onboard before strapping ourselves to this book of cumbersome regulations forevermore.