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Massachusetts Nurse :: September
2005
Attention school and municipal public health nurses:
legislative action alert!
Attention school and municipal public health nurses:
municipal managers are lobbying Beacon Hill very hard to
get the right to make unilateral changes in your health care
costs and coverage—but municipal public employee unions
across the state are mobilizing. Coordinated grassroots lobbying
by union members on this issue is essential.
Why is taking away the collective bargaining rights of
municipal workers part of the health care debate?
The wrong direction
The primary focus of the health care debate on Beacon Hill
is to find a way to cover the uninsured. However, one aspect
of this debate has nothing to do with this goal. The governor,
some legislators and some mayors want to strip away the
collective bargaining rights of the municipal employees in
our 351 cities and towns.
Governor Romney’s plan would eliminate health insurance
from collective bargaining all together. He is pushing to
remove health insurance negotiations at the local level from
the collective bargaining process. As part of his overall proposal
to reform the state’s health care system, Romney plans
to file the legislation as the second part of his plan to increase
access to affordable health insurance, in part by requiring
residents to purchase insurance or be penalized.
The latest provision is designed to give local officials
greater flexibility in negotiating health insurance details and
help control rising local health care costs. The plan would
create a local option for cities and towns to appoint a board
of municipal officials and labor representatives to negotiate health insurance for local employees.
| S. 2042 |
Why it's wrong |
| Allow cities and towns to unilaterally increase
their
workers’ health insurance premium contributions without
having to bargain over it. |
Health insurance premiums are and should
be bargained over as part of the wage and benefit package
like
in virtually every
private sector contract. |
| Allow cities and towns to negotiate different
premium
share arrangements with different bargaining units. |
This will create a multi-tiered, uneven
playing field, with larger, more powerful employee groups
gaining
a better benefit. |
| Remove the requirements that certain health
benefits (like
cardiac rehabilitation) be covered. |
This essentially strips away basic coverage,
that without, municipal employees may lose life savings trying
to pay for. |
| Allow HMOs to sell policies with severe caps
on visits and
services. |
In an era of preventative health care,
this only will increase costs
in the long-run. |
Bad for public health, school nurses
These schemes would permit every municipal employer
to unilaterally increase health insurance premiums as much
as 400 percent/$4,800* a year for a typical nurse, teacher, fire
fighter, police officer, sanitation worker or janitor.
There’s a better solution
The most efficient and effective way of bargaining over
health insurance is coalition bargaining—a process already
provided for in Chapter 32B. Municipal employers who want
more efficient negotiations should avail themselves of coalition
bargaining.
No one understands better than municipal workers the seriousness
of the commonwealth’s health care problems. Health care costs are squeezing public
workers family budgets. The solution to this problem, however, is not to make
health care
less affordable for working and middle class people in public
service. Indeed, it is unclear why provisions dealing with
public employees are included in this bill at all, such issues
should be addressed in a different vehicle.
Act now
MNA members should contact their legislators—click
here—as soon as possible and declare their opposition to
any effort by the Legislature to allow management to make
unilateral changes in local public employees’ health insurance.
Our message: collective bargaining of health insurance
issues for local public employees must not be sacrificed in the
name of health care reform.
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