A reader sent along more news about the concessionary contracts that SEIU is bargaining throughout California.
Last Thursday, the Stockton
Record reported that SEIU negotiated a contract that cuts the wages, health
insurance and pension benefits for nearly 4,000 government workers employed by
San Joaquin County in California. Here are some excerpts from the article,
entitled “S.J. Workers’ Health, Pension Costs to Rise:”
San Joaquin County government workers will shoulder a larger share of their health and retirement benefit costs in a labor deal approved last week by county officials…The deal calls for individual employees to contribute to their health care premiums. Typically, workers paid a share of their health care only if they included dependents in their coverage. Union workers also will be contributing more to the cost of their pensions and take a 1.15 percent pay reduction in the form of three furlough days a year.The workers also agreed to a second-tier retirement plan for new employees, which would change the pension formula and raise the minimum retirement age…SEIU will return $2.5 million to the county from a fund to help cover retirement health care costs.
Tasty hears that the deal's terms on health insurance will have devastating, open-ended
effects on employees. Not only do workers now have to pay a share of monthly premium costs for "employee-only" insurance, they will now pay at least 50% of future
increases in monthly premiums. As premiums go up and up, workers
will likely be on the hook for hundreds of dollars per month to insure their
families. Here’s a cost-out of SEIU’s
concessions for an average employee who gets coverage for herself and one dependent from the Kaiser health plan (click on the image below to make it larger):
