As contract negotiations with the University enter their ninth month, fed-up Physical Plant union members are breaking the silence by denouncing an offer that will double their insurance expenses and, in their view, insufficiently compensate for the added costs. The proposed contract will increase their insurance costs to the same level as faculty, librarians, administrators, and Public Safety officers, many of whom earn significantly higher annual salaries than the Physical Plant staff, a department comprised largely of custodians and construction workers.
“We have hit a brick wall with the new administration,” said AFL-CIO Business Representative John Hahn, who is representing the Physical Plant workers’ union. “All they care about is the books. We have a new pencil pusher in town, the president, who is increasingly cutting costs.”
The Union is dissatisfied with the proposed package of a 2.5 percent annual raise and $1,000 signing bonus. Members say this will not cover the increased insurance expenses nor the rising cost of inflation, which currently hovers around four percent. Over the last three years, Physical Plant employees received two percent raises every year to alleviate the cost of inflation. According to Plumbing Foreman Dean Canalia, Physical Plant workers earn in the range of $34,000 to $60,000 annually.
Vice President of Facilities Joyce Topshe, who oversees Physical Plant, says that it is only fair that all Wesleyan staff foot the same bill for insurance.
“Physical Plant employees currently contribute less than half of what others pay,” Topshe said. “The University’s position is that Physical Plant employees should be contributing the same amount for their health insurance as other Wesleyan employees.”
The problem, says electrician Ron Bowman, is that many other University employees such as faculty receive higher annual raises that are compounded by salaries that are double or even triple the amount that most maintenance employees receive.
“I think there is injustice being shown towards Physical Plant workers when there is a disparity in compensation,” Bowman said. “Case in point: professors. They have a compensation package comparable to the rising cost of inflation.”
According to Assistant Professor of MB&B Bob Lane, a member of the Faculty Compensation and Benefits Commi-ttee, professors do receive higher annual raises compared with the 2.5 percent Physical Plant employees are being offered.
“Typically, I think it is in the four percent range, though it is variable from year to year,” Lane said, noting that the faculty’s six percent raise last year was granted in order to catch up to peer institutions.
Vice President for Finance and Administration John Meerts, citing legal issues, would not comment on the pending negotiations nor provide numbers on annual raises for administrators. Topshe, however, made the case that the proposed annual raise is reasonable.
“The University has proposed annual wage increases for each year of a three year contract, along with a significant sign on bonus,” she said. “The University believes that this proposed increase is well in line with the market and squarely in accordance with the standards throughout the University.”
Over the course of the negotiations, many union members say that they’ve felt criticized for being overpaid. Whether that can be qualified, data from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that while Physical Plant workers currently pay below the national average for maintenance workers’ monthly health insurance costs, the proposed contract would drive them above.
Employees in the middle-tier (HMO) insurance plan currently pay 28 percent less than the single-payer national average of $82.21, and 49 percent less than the average national family co-pay of $314.33. However, the proposed contract would have them pay 62 percent more than the national average for single-payer coverage, and 14 percent more than average for family coverage. Even under the proposed plan, the University would still pay more than the national average for employee insurance.
At a meeting on Wednesday, the Physical Plant Union met with the Secretarial Union, one of the only other departments on campus that does not pay the higher insurance costs. When they sit down for negotiations with the University in the coming months, Secretarial Union Stewards, such as Virginia Harris, are expecting a similar proposal.
“We expect the same treatment as Physical Plant has received, as we are negotiating with the same people,” Harris wrote via e-mail. “The idea that we are ’overpaid’ was verbalized by the administration in our last contract negotiations. It is not true. In the past, Wesleyan has offered excellent wage and benefit packages that drew many of us from Yale to here (including me), but over the last five years we have fallen behind our counterparts there in every category of compensation and benefits.”
At the meeting, Hahn argued that administrative mandates have led to a climate where failing to raise insurance costs for lower-class University employees would appear weak to their higher-ups.
“The money is not the issue,” he said to the union members. “It’s all about politics. They’ve done it to others and they’re not going to look good if they come out of these negotiations without doing it to you.”
Ultimately, says Topshe, the talks are close to being resolved.
“The negotiations have been productive and cordial and the University believes that significant progress has been made through the hard work of both sides,” she said. “The parties continue to negotiate miscellaneous issues regarding general working conditions and terms. The vast majority of these issues have been resolved through discussions to date.”
Union members, however, seem less optimistic.
“There’s not much negotiating going on,” Canalia said. “We’ve gotten pretty much nowhere for the last eight months.”