Health Tip of The Labour Party

When it comes to limiting the costs of municipal health care, the train leaves the station. This week, the union movement came to Government House – and tried to board the caboose.

“We are here in a spirit of cooperation,”proclaimed Robert Haynes, president of the AFL-CIO, the work reported the plan on Monday.” We are here to make real efforts to reach a compromise on health care. We understand times are hard, and we are ready to sacrifice some more, and still larger than the solution of these difficult times.”

It ‘hard to believe that Haynes believed. This plan is so stupid that not even have to be respectful consideration.

Under the proposed work, if the municipal unions and the administration can not accept an indefinite number and not binding – and therefore easily evaded -”reference “to save health care, a kind of rule binding arbitration in question. (It is an idea to a red flag immediately, taking into account the experiences of the Menino administration of compulsory arbitration in disputes with the firefighters and police of the Union.) Half of the savings through any changes in plan design or join the state Group Insurance Commission would union members, at least the first year.

In exchange for these provisions (very bad), the paper proposes to limit the flexibility of the plan mid-year GC for change – (!) And increase the representation of work in half the commission members.

“What this means is that you would take collective bargaining to a different place,”Dolores Mitchell, executive director of the Commission, said in an interview.

President Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts taxpayers foundation put directly: .. “So instead of urban planning, the planning authorities, the reform is to give yourself a virtual veto through GIC”E ‘absolutely right, however, to solve local problems, the plan could ruin a highly labor efficient agency that offers health insurance plans for state employees.

Why, given the history of unions to block a significant change at the local level, you hear more and more influence on the GC at all? (Any other person that the unions themselves, that is.) As several mayors at a parliamentary hearing on the local costs of health care yesterday, the stubborn attitude change plan work means that health care costs are cannibalizing the city and force the layoffs of other employees. In Salem, the annual increases in health care costs and pensions regularly exceed new revenues, a dynamic that has forced at least a dozen layoffs in the past two years, Mayor Kim Driscoll said.

“I’m the one who must see that person in the eye, which is published is not because he did a bad job or because we do not appreciate his service, or need it, but because his colleagues wanted to keep a copayment of $ 5,’’she said.

Here’s the real question. Why local unions to negotiate details of the health plan at all? After all, government employees are not. We can most public sector employees.

“It ’s been said many times … The fact that these unions have abandoned much of their collective bargaining to negotiate terveydenhuollon”Haynes responded when I put that query to him.

Hmm It ‘been said many times that Elvis is alive, too. But where is the evidence? I have not seen any credible research or knowledge, which refers to the Massachusetts municipal employees are underpaid compared to their counterparts in the private sector.

Even if the unions insist that it is true for government workers in general, Bureau of Labor Statistics data Boston-Manchester, NH, area is not really the concept of detention. State and local government workers earn more in six professions in 1911. In addition, average hourly pay of public sector trade union movement is more than $ 5 per hour more than union members from the private sector.

In summary, this commitment is so selfish that he”can not even considered too hardworking, old horse down.

It is instead a Trojan horse – and the legislature must address.