UE Local 170 is once again in the front line of a worker justice issue in West Virginia. In November, the Finance Board of the Public Employee Insurance Agency hatched a plot to increase employee contributions, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums for state employees. State law requires public hearings on such changes, and the board got an earful of protest from workers and other citizens at six events around the state. Dozens of UE members attended the hearings and composed the largest group in attendance at several of them.
The board proposed to increase employee premiums by 4 to 8 percent for the health plan most workers are in, and to increase deductibles by $50 and family out-of-pocket maximum costs by $1,500. In addition, they proposed higher premiums for overweight participants and those who smoke and a $50-a-month penalty for insuring an employee’s spouse if the spouse’s employer offers coverage.
UE members, teachers union members and others vocally objected to these plans at hearings in Charleston, Beckley, Martinsburg, Morgantown, Wheeling and Huntington. Dale Lee, president of the West Virginia Education Association, called it “a blatant money grab from the pockets of employees.” Local 170 President Bruce Dotson ridiculed the plan to charge more for overweight employees as “selling insurance by the pound.”
Pavonne Pettigrew, a UE Local 170 activist and retired state geologist, attended five of the six hearings. She “never heard even one person come within a football field of approving of anything about the plan.” She saw “dozens and dozens of people from every walk of life” speak passionately against the proposal.
The board planned to meet on December 3 to approve the plan. But UE Local 170 issued a press release objecting that the public had not been given 30 days notice as required by law. The union also says the hearings were invalid because none of them were attended by a quorum of the nine board members.
The board decided to delay a vote because, says Pavonne Pettigrew, of the “groundswell of rage” they had encountered against their proposal. Instead, they announced a revised plan that is even worse. The second proposal to lower the premiums for state employees who are paid more than $50,000 a year, and to pay for that generosity by charging more to lower-paid state workers. “This demonstrates the total cluelessness of these people,” says Pettigrew.
UE denounced the second plan as a “Robin Hood in reverse” proposal – robbing the poor to benefit the not-so-poor. And because this is a new proposal, the union says the board is required to give 30 days notice all over again and another round of public hearing before it takes action. As the UE NEWS went to press, the finance board was planning to meet again on December 17 – and UE Local 170 planned to be present to keep up the fight.