Board of Aldermen 3-31-2020 Page 12
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
President Wilshire can | have another question?
President Wilshire
Alderman Gathright.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
Alright so our starting point is with the unaffiliated, | think, for me, where | am struggling with this, because |
think our starting point should have been with the Union, because if we pass this tonight, and the Union
says,”no” — where is the savings?
Kim Kleiner, Admin. Services Director
So whenever we institute health care changes in our City because we do have 17 Unions, we have to start
somewhere.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
Yes.
Kim Kleiner, Admin. Services Director
And we can always say “Oh we should have started with negotiating with this group” or “we should have
started with that group”. You have to deal with the groups that have contracts that are expiring and that’s
where you have to start. Because you have to start at the beginning of the process. We do know that each
group, as they come on, will save the City money. As we see people shift over to the HSA, there will be
savings. That is not to say that we can’t engage in having employees shift during every open enrollment from
the HMO to the HSA without any Plan Redesign. But what we do know is that you have to start with some
group, the unaffiliated of course doesn’t have a contract that expires; it is managed between the Mayor and
the Board of Aldermen and that’s where we decided. There are other conversations that are happening and
we will deal with that through the CBA Strategy Team and we will have active conversations with 17 other
different Unions.
Mayor Donchess
Can | answer Alderwoman Gathright’s question a little bit more? First of all there is a group of unionized
employees who seems likely now to agree to this change and there are a number of factors that would be
included in the agreement. But it seems like that will probably happen. Number Two, oftentimes changes we
make with the unaffiliated occur first and when we — or by themselves or only to the unaffiliated and those are
often very favorable things. For example the last time we revised the Ordinance governing affiliated
employees, we raised the pay scales, we increased the number of steps, we raised the steps and a number
of people benefited very substantially from that. This was not anything that was available to other employee
groups. So we, in the past, have done a lot for unaffiliated employees. And Number Three — this will mean
that whoever gets in on this, their weekly contributions will go down significantly. So if this becomes effective
for July 1 for the unaffiliated employees, the amount the unaffiliated employees have to give into the City will
be reduced by about 15%. So that’s, you know, $50.00 a week on a family plan. It could be that, maybe even
a little bit more, so they will save money along with the City. It’s not just the City that is saving money. The
vast majority of unaffiliated employees will actually see a weekly benefit out of this. | think that’s why we
didn’t get many questions. | mean people are thinking, “Well I’m now paying $350.00, maybe 1’ll only pay
$300.00 starting July 1, that sounds pretty good”. So the bottom line of all three points is | don’t think we are
— and | think the point of your question, is that | don’t think we are being unfair to this group of employees. |
