[T]he bargaining process between school districts and teacher unions on health insurance plans for the state’s 40,000 public school employees has reached an impasse and will now go to mediation.
The two sides have been in discussion since April to find a health care plan for the employees that is acceptable to both parties. A 10-person commission comprised of five union representatives — four from the Vermont-NEA and one from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — and five school board members, has been working for months to try to find common ground.
The groups have been unable to agree on basic eligibility standards, on the share of premiums paid by employees and employers, and the way out-of-pocket costs will be allocated.
In the eligibility requirements dispute, the school boards say an employee should have to work at least 20 hours a week to be eligible for health care benefits, with employees working 20 hours a week during just the academic year also qualifying. The union, meanwhile, wants the eligibility criteria to include anyone working 60% of full time or more, with individual districts deciding themselves how many hours a week qualifies as full time.
Both groups agree that the coverage should be through the Vermont Employees Health Initiative, which would offer four plans ranging from “silver” to “platinum.”
But when it comes to who would actually pay for those plans, the disagreements continue. School boards want a two-year plan, with licensed personnel (teachers and principals) putting in an 80/20 employer/employee split on premiums right from the beginning. The union, by contrast, wants to build to an 80/20 split for licensed personnel, and an 85/15 split for hourly workers, but only after four years.
And on the final piece of the equation, out-of-pocket costs, the unions want a funded HRA (health reimbursement arrangement), meaning that school districts would put up money in advance rather than reimbursing as costs are incurred. And after a period of time, the money that is contributed could be held by employees as a retirement investment account.
The school districts, on the other hand, want to contribute based on estimated costs of 80% of the “CDHP gold” plan, which would offer a combination of HSA and HRA out-of-pocket costs.
On all three matters, the two groups are at a standstill, unable to find common ground.
The employers at the table have taken issue with a lack of data from union representatives on the increased cost to taxpayers that their proposal would involve. They say they’re unwilling to agree to any union proposal without “fully understanding its cost and evaluating whether it is affordable for Vermont’s school districts and their supporting taxpayers.”
The union reps, meanwhile, say the Legislature established a very tight time frame for the committee to create a new system that covers all school employees, and that it’s been a challenge for both sides to find the data they need to cost out their proposals.
“We’ve worked hard to get the most accurate numbers we possibly can,” said Will Adams, an elementary school teacher in Hardwick and the spokesperson for union members on the commission.
His coalition members, conversely, contend they never saw a complete proposal from the school boards in one setting, which made it difficult to understand what their package might look like in its entirety.
“We’re disappointed so much time was wasted arguing about who was going to be in the room and about unfair labor practices,” Adams said. “We feel like a lot of time was wasted.”
Adams said that between the school boards arguing about who was going to be allowed at the table and canceling at least one meeting, things started on “a not great foot.” He said it didn’t feel like they were “as prepared as they could have or should have been” going into the negotiations.
“And candidly, the proposal the school boards put on the table just wasn’t credible,” he said. “If you look at what is out there in terms of existing contracts, the proposal they put on the table was way beyond anything that’s the norm in what’s been bargained over the however last many decades.”
Joe McNeil, spokesman for the school boards, said their camp is really just aiming to provide “a reasonable level of cost containment.”
“By that we don’t necessarily mean reducing cost in a total sense, we would just like to preclude the escalation in health care costs that has been with us for a while,” McNeil said. “Our goal is to keep it a generally reasonable rate if at all possible.”
The school boards think high deductible plans with lower premiums but higher out-of-pocket costs for employees will be a “great investment” on that front.
McNeil said they’re also concerned about increasing taxpayer costs that are associated with the union’s proposal. Adams, though, said it often feels as if they’re too concerned about the taxpayer, and not concerned enough about the people they actually represent.
“That’s really not what a school board’s primary function is,” he said. “Their primary function is to provide for a high quality school system. It’s naive on their part to think that somehow throughout this negotiation process, the cost of providing health care is going to go down — it’s not.”
Starting Aug. 1, the parties will head to mediation with Mark Grossman, a Boston-based attorney. At that time, the parties will more formally present their positions and their rationale in support of those positions. Grossman will then analyze the information and make a non-binding recommendation on how to proceed.
The groups will have 30 more days to talk to one another and find common ground. But if agreement isn’t reached, both sides will have to present their proposals to a new arbitrator, who will be tasked with picking one proposal or the other in its entirety.
“It’s designed with the thought of being an incentive to reaching a settlement,” McNeil said. “That way you don’t totally win or totally lose.”
