Health Care Deal Reached!!!

On Thursday, the GTFF and the UO signed a deal settling the summer health care bargaining that got carried over into this year.

The deal is this:

The UO will continue to pay for GTF health insurance at the same rate that they did last year. This is a slight over payment because there was a slight decrease in the cost of health care this year. All excess funds paid by the UO will go toward future payments.

The annual cap will stay at $250,000 for the time being. There is a strong possibility that the health care reform bill currently being hammered out in Congress will almost automatically eliminate annual caps on essential medical benefits. If it does not, the GTFF has reserved the right to bring up the subject of the annual cap, including the possibility of making it retroactive, in the current round of negotiations.

The University will increase their payment for the administration of the health care from $75,000 to $85,000. That's still not all the Trust needs, but the bargaining team felt this increase was adequate.

That's the deal. It probably doesn't look like much, but as you can tell from the posts here, here, here, and here, it was a bit of a wild ride.

Anticipating a couple of question, let me offer these pre-emptive answers.

Q: Wait, aren't we still bargaining with the UO over wages and whatnots?
A: We began bargaining over just the health care portion of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) last June. As we discovered that the GTFF and the UO were not at all on the same page over the matter of Appendix I and whether or not the UO owed the GTFF an additional $250K to cover the cost of increasing the annual cap on benefits, we agreed to go to arbitration to settle the matter. Scheduling arbitration takes forever and was set to begin on January 21.

In the meantime, we began bargaining over the rest of the CBA in October and that bargaining will carry forward.

Q: Why drop arbitration and make this deal?
A: The bargaining team strongly suspects that Congress will render any arbitration ruling invalid or unnecessary. We felt that it made little sense to risk losing $4,000 on something that would be rendered null either way shortly before or after we received a ruling. Plus, we had strong reason to believe that an arbitrator would likely rule that the two parties never had a "meeting of the minds" and order us back to the bargaining table. Given this possible outcome, it made even less sense to risk money when a bargaining session was currently ongoing.

Q: Does the bargaining team support this deal?
A: Yes. It is not everything we would have like to have gotten and we're not walking away thinking we kicked ass or anything, but given the complete misunderstand of Appendix I, the ongoing budget crisis, the uncertainty about what it is Congress is up to, and the fact we can always bring these issues up at the (other) bargaining table, we feel like this is a good deal and encourage you all to vote yes.

Please vote as soon as you get your ballot. The GTFF has an hefty quorum requirement and we need all the votes we can get. Mail you ballot back or drop it off at the GTFF office, but vote, vote, vote.

Feel free to ask questions. I will post (reasonable) questions in the comments and try to provide answers.