Belated Update, Last Minute Anouncement

Last July 23, the union made its opening proposal for health care bargaining. Not surprisingly, we asked the UO to pay the entire cost of the increase in health insurance costs. Since the the cost of renewal is pretty cheap, the UO didn't really say anything about it.

Dean Linton did ask a question, though. He was wondering if the GTFF had done any surveys or had systematically asked our members in any way if they were concerned about the cost of health insurance and the ratio of how much the UO spends on health insurance to how much they spend on wages. He explained he was asking because, apparently, they hear from many faculty and staff that they would rather receive money in the form of pay and buy their own health insurance or spend the money however they wanted as individuals.

I told him that we had not conducted any such surveys, but in my seven years of working for the GTFF, I have not had a single GTF mention to me that they would rather not have the health care and get more money. I did mention that if any GTF was concerned about the health care to wages ratio, they would probably be more interested in seeing their wages go up. I mean it was just sitting there, so I couldn't ignore it, but I also didn't want to make too big of a deal of it.

I doubt that Rich was asking only because he was interested in GTF attitudes to health care/wage ratios, but more to set up the "if you want health care, you need to be prepared to give up wages" line, which is, of course, his job. We should hear more about this when the UO makes a counter-proposal.

Speaking of which, we hear that counter-proposal tomorrow. Thursday, August 6 at 3 pm in the Umpqua Room of the EMU. This will be our first taste of the UO's rhetoric concerning the budget crisis. Fortunately, we are not asking for much, so we don't expect a lot of it, but, again, they kind of have to roll it out just to set up bargaining for next fall. But then, you never know what they have up their sleeve.

My worst fear is that they propose "bargaining" wages and fees now, offering a wage freeze or something in exchange for paying the minimal cost increase for health care. This would be unfortunate because it would complicate what should be a very simple health care negotiation.