Reading the recent Argus article regarding the stalled Physical Plant contract talks (“Stonewalled: Physical Plant contract talks go,” March 28, 2008, Volume CXLIII, Number 35), I can not help but be disturbed by the suggestion that it is not “fair” that Physical Plant employees are paying less than other University employees for their healthcare. While on the surface it may seem that there is an imbalance, when all the facts are taken into consideration, it is clear that Physical Plant employees do not have an unfair advantage over other employees.
Physical Plant employees currently pay for 15 percent of their healthcare costs, with the University paying for the other 85 percent. Most other University employees (with the exception of members of the Secretarial/Clerical union) currently pay for 33 percent of their healthcare costs. In 1991, though, this was not the case. At that time, all University employees paid the lower rate of 15 percent for healthcare. In 1992, the University raised the cost of healthcare for all employees to 33 percent. Physical Plant and Secretarial/Clerical employees were not affected by this increase. The cost of their healthcare was stipulated in their bargaining agreement with the University, therefore the University was unable to apply this increase to those two groups.
At that time, to make up for the increase in healthcare costs, the University gave all full-time employees other than Physical Plant and Secretarial/Clerical employees something that they referred to as a “flex credit.” The flex credit was additional money in each employee’s paycheck equal to three percent of the employee’s base pay. Employees continued to receive these payments for more than a decade.
A few years ago, the University discontinued the flex credit program, but converted the money from the flex credit into each employee’s base pay. Physical Plant employees never received this flex credit.
If the University is insisting that it is only fair that Physical Plant employees pay the same for healthcare, would it not also be fair that Physical Plant employees receive additional payments similar to the flex credit that other employees received to compensate for increased healthcare costs? The current compensation package that the University is offering Physical Plant (a two-and-a-half-percent annual raise and $1,000 signing bonus) is not above and beyond what the University typically gives to other employees. Why should Physical Plant employees have to incur these costs without being given something to offset these additional payments as other employees were?
The suggestion of fairness is itself an interesting one when the flex credit is taken into consideration. When the flex credit program was instituted, it was done to offset the additional healthcare costs that employees were being made to pay by raising their payment to 33 percent. The three-percent flex credit that was given to employees meant that the employee making $100,000 per year received an additional $3,000 each year to cover their increased healthcare costs, while the employee earning $50,000 per year received only $1,500 additional pay. An employee making $100,000 annually does not have higher healthcare costs than an employee making $50,000 annually. How was this fair?
Members of the Physical Plant union regularly work many overtime hours in excess of their normally scheduled 40-hour workweek. They respond from their homes at all hours of the night when there is an emergency on campus. They perform the filthiest work on campus, from cleaning up bodily fluids to crawling around in dirty access tunnels, attics and basements. Along with Public Safety, they are the only people who have representatives on campus 24 hours per day, every day of the year, to serve the University community. They work outdoors in adverse weather conditions, and they perform work that is hazardous. Without them, the University would cease to function. Given the current state of their negotiations with the University, it is difficult to believe that the administration understands and appreciates this.
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