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News :: Labor |
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GEO Pickets UI Over Inadequate Health Care Offer |
Current rating: 0 |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
03 Dec 2003
Modified: 07:08:24 PM |
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World-class institution makes health care benefit package offer described as "junior-college level" |
Approximately 150 Graduate Employees' Organization members and supporters marched in an informational picket outside Grainger Library, site of ongoing but nearly stalled contract negotiations with the University of Illinois, after hearing details of the University's initial health care benefits package offer. One year after the GEO won a union representation election to speak for more than 2,000 graduate employees who work teaching grading, and performing other work at the University, little progress has been made on non-economic issues, while the health care issue has finally been, only today, the first economic issue to be discussed.
Although details of the package remain confidential, to say that GEO members were disappointed in the University's initial offer would be an understatement. Their chants of "No contract, no peace!" could be heard echoing off the brick and mortar assets of the campus, which apparently has far less regard for its employees that it does for the landscaping.
Health benefits are _the_ key issue for the GEO. Graduate students currently pay $652 annually for a health care package that only pays for 80% of most claims. Other universities in the UI's peer group offer health care at NO COST to their graduate employees, according to GEO researchers, picking up the entire cost of health insurance packages that range from $1,333 to $2,245 annually for plans that offer either %100 coverage of claims or require only a small $10-15 co-payment.
The UI's plan's inadequacies were apparent in the health care horror stories that a number of graduate employees related, some of whom have already paid as much as 20% of their annual pay this fall for out-of-pocket costs not covered under the University's current plan.
Needless to say, the marching grads are determined to see health care addressed to close the gap between the UI's pint-sized plan and those of other, comparable universities. While the UI is considered to be a world-class institution in many respects, word of the failings of its health coverage for its graduate student employees threatens the institution's ability to compete in attracting top scholars who would do well to consider other schools with good health coverage.
Plans are already in the works to turn up the heat in the new year in order for the GEO to achieve a first contract that addresses a number of issues, the most important of which is health care. Given the mood in the caucus room and on the picket line this afternoon, it will also be a tense and troublesome spring for university adminstrators if they don't return to the bargaining table with a credible offer on health care and quit dragging their feet on a number of other issues.
GEO members are determined to have a good contract in place by the end of the spring semester. A year was long enough to wait for this and everyday longer than that only increases the militancy of the marching GEO members. |
