Posts tagged health premiums
Vernon, police union reach agreement over contract, ending court dispute
October 28, 2023 // The town and union had previously gone to arbitration with the union over pay and healthcare premiums during which the town failed to submit its final best offers on a wide range of contract issues to the arbitrators in what was called a “scrivener’s error,” resulting in the arbitration panel awarding the union everything it asked for at the time. The town then took the matter to court to overturn the arbitration decision. Vernon argued that because both parties agreed to waive statutory arbitration requirements, it was not required to submit last best offers on issues that were not in dispute. The arbitration panel disagreed with this argument, saying state statute requires that they reach a decision according to the statement of the last best offer and could not consider any offer that wasn’t documented in writing before them. That court case, which had statutory interpretation issues at stake, however, will no longer play out as the town and union appear to have reached an agreement, primarily around pay for officers and maintaining previous contract language around a number of other issues that had been decided by the arbitration panel when there was no final best offer from the town.
OPINION: Pritzker risks bankrupting Illinois to curry favor with Big Labor
August 14, 2023 // Members of AFSCME Council 31 eagerly voted in local union meetings over the past two weeks to ratify the contract, which negotiators had tentatively agreed to on July 1. And who could blame them? The contract also includes a $1,200 “stipend” paid to every worker merely for ratifying the contract. Pritzker, a Democrat, included these bonuses in his last contract negotiation in 2019, ostensibly to compensate workers for the financial “hardship” of being state employees under his Republican predecessor, Bruce Rauner. Predictably, such payoffs have now become standard operating procedure. The governor celebrated his and AFSCME’s windfall by tweeting out, “Illinois is a pro-worker state through and through.” The pronouncement was eerily reminiscent of Biden’s one-time campaign promise to become the “most pro-union president you ever saw.”
Weyerhaeuser union worker strike enters 11th day with no end in sight
September 27, 2022 // Additionally, Weyerhaeuser insists employee retirement benefits will remain intact, including pension benefits for eligible employees. But as for health care premiums, the company says they are not asking for anything outside of the norm for other Weyerhaeuser employees in the U.S. “We have offered to pay 97% of the health care premium, with employees responsible for only 3% to start,” Weyerhaeuser said. “This amounts to about $17 per month for single employees and about $46 per month for employees with families. We believe this is more than fair, and the breadth and quality of coverage available through our health care plan remains unchanged.”