Health insurance, vacation and leaves
This is not comprehensive. The company has only recently provided details of the sick-leave, health insurance and other policies that it now offers to non-union workers and which it wants to replace the current Guild policies. At first review, however: the health-care plans available to Guild members would be only the two UnitedHealthcare choices; someone on short-term disability for an illness or for childbirth would be paid at 70 percent of their wage, rather than the full wage; and the total number of sick days available would be cut at least by half.)
What the company proposes:
- Eliminate HealthPartners as a choice. All full-time employees would be offered the same plan and be required to pay 30 percent of the premium. (Under the current contract, employees who choose HealthPartners accept higher monthly premiums because the company’s contribution to the plan is capped.)
- Eliminate the current Guild policy for sick time and short- and long-term disability leave and replace with the policies offered to non-union workers. Total potential sick days would be reduced from between 10 and 20 per year to five per year. Short-term disability leave would be paid at 70 percent of full-time wages, not 100 percent of full-time wages.These policies affect both people who have serious illnesses and women who go on short-term disability after childbirth.
- Eliminate current vacation policy and replace with “earn-as-you-go” accrual. Under the current accrual policy: Employees in 2007 are earning vacation to be taken in 2008. This 2008 vacation time is yours; if you leave the company before the end of 2007, the company will pay you your accrued 2008 vacation along with any unused 2007 vacation. Under the company’s proposal: Employees would be earning 2007 vacation time in 2007; if you left before the end of the year, the difference between the amount of time taken and earned in a given year would be paid in — or, presumably, taken from — the employee’s last paycheck
- No health care coverage for future retirees.
Concerns with company proposal:
- Maintaining HealthPartners as a choice was a clear priority of Guild members in this year’s small-group meetings and surveys. Employees now bear the cost of that choice, so its impact on the company’s costs is not clear. However, moving all employees to the same plan – and eliminating the requirement that future changes to that plan need to be negotiated with the Guild – could leave employees exposed to significant cost increases and/or benefit reductions in the future.
- Significant changes to short-term disability could strike a blow to the environment that makes the Pioneer Press a good place to work for parents, particularly mothers, who would be paid 70 cents on the dollar for the short-term disability leave they take following childbirth.
- Depending on how the transition is made from the current vacation accrual to the proposed “earn as you go” accrual, employees could lose an entire year’s worth of their vacation, effectively donating that time to the company.
What the Guild proposes:
- reasonable cost-sharing for comprehensive health coverage
- to add parents and spouse to the list of persons for whose care an employee can take sick or short-term disability leave. Provide three days of funeral leave for all relatives described in that section (contract page 40)
- to improve vacation so employees are eligible for four weeks after five years and five weeks after 10 years. (It now takes six years to be eligible for four weeks and 20 years to be eligible for five.)
- to add the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and two personal days