The school committee motioned their support to joining GIC, but stand opposed to the teachers’ union over collective bargaining.

By Andrew Firestone

Mayor Joseph Curtatone has been a strong proponent of the healthcare amendment to the newest state budget for the new fiscal year. The amendment, which allows cities and towns in the Commonwealth to unilaterally join the Group Insurance Commission, unless presented with a cheaper option, would save the City of Somerville an estimated $3.8 million for the next fiscal year, going a long way to solving the City’s $7.5 million budget gap, with a total of $10 million in overall savings.

However, the plan has been criticized by public union labor representatives for taking away protections that they have, including raising the split on their premiums by five percent. All three State Representatives who comprise the Somerville delegation in the House Chamber voted against the amendment to the budget.

“The recent recession and rising health care costs caused the current financial crisis, not unions and certainly not the educators working in our city’s schools,” said Jackie Lawrence, president of the Somerville Teachers’ Association. “We care deeply about our students and the future of the Somerville schools and are willing to do our part, but we want a seat at the table and we want to make sure that there are protections in place for our most vulnerable, retirees and those who are sick.”

The sentiment of working to protect retirees was echoed by the State Representatives, including Representatives Tim Toomey (D-Cambridge, Somerville), Carl Sciortino (D-Somerville/Medford) and Denise Provost, (D-Somerville), who explained she voted against the amendment because, “it would have precluded bargaining to retirees who are on fixed income and would be greatly affected by the cost of health insurance.”

“The big problem here is the high and rising costs of healthcare. It’s not that municipal employees have health insurance, it’s that healthcare costs are ruinous for all of us, not just for municipalities and I have not yet seen evidence that our state is serious about controlling healthcare costs,” said Provost

“I understand the Mayor’s situation and I understand the Mayor’s position but I have a broader duty to the Commonwealth and to everyone in it and I think that the way to discharge that duty properly is to deal with rising healthcare costs,” she said.

“It’s that balancing of the needs of the city with the needs of the employees who need to access healthcare that makes me believes that unions need to be a part of negotiations, need to be at the bargaining table and undermining the rights of unions to bargain over the healthcare savings in the name of financial solvency of the City is wrong,” said Sciortino.

“I feel that the unions have a place at the table with discussion especially pertaining to bargaining rights that they have achieved over the years,” said Toomey. “I think it’s very important that they continue to have that voice at the table. Very simple.”

In contrast, the City’s position was supported by the Somerville School Committee in their resolution on April 26, which said they “strongly support proposed legislation that would give cities and towns the authority to manage soaring health care costs by either joining the State [GIC] or providing communities with the flexibility to institute their own health insurance plans that provide equivalent savings.”

“There’re no good answers here,” said Superintendent Anthony Pierantozzi. “Every year the amount of money that the Mayor and the Board of Alderman, myself in the school committee, have to spend on all the services we give: instead of it getting bigger, it actually gets smaller,” he said, regarding the ballooning costs of health insurance for the City, which is projected around $39 million this year combined with the dramatic fall of State Aid in recent years.

Pierantozzi asked, “can we continue to keep carving back on personnel, materials supplies, technologies to pay for the medical insurance growth, or does something systemic have to happen?”

Paul Bockleman, Vice-Chair of the School Committee, continues, “Healthcare is crushing the City’s budget, and while it is an obligation of the City to provide healthcare to its workers, the City has to have the tools to manage those expenses. This provides one tool that will help the city for one year manage these expenses.”

Sciortino rejected the pro-amendment rhetoric saying the budget amendment would only take limited actions counter to union wishes and would open the Commonwealth to larger economic consequences.

“In this financial crisis, it was only healthcare. In the next financial crisis, it’s something else. As a democrat and as a supporter of middle class and working families, I don’t believe in undermining collective bargaining.”

Provost was also disappointed with the decision of her partition’s 111-42 loss in the House and hoped that the safeguards she wished for would be placed in the new Senate budget. She said she hoped for a provision which would allow for third-party mediation in the case of disagreements between public unions and cities and towns, “and then take disputing parties beyond a deadlock into a fair resolution of their differences than the senate might have something which doesn’t gut collective bargain rights.”

“And if they can do that, bravo,” she said. 

The budget debate on the Senate floor May 18 will be a new test for state Senator Sal DiDomenico who said that education was one of his top priorities. “There’s a lot of tough decisions that have to be made and we obviously have to do the best we can with whatever resources we have,” he said, adding, “I’m a big proponent of making sure that labor has a seat at table.”

Labor Unions were reportedly enraged at the passage of the new bill through the house on April 27. While the new amendment would strip unions of the right to collectively bargain, it did allow for unions to put forward their own plans if the savings were equal to those of the GIC. 

“Last month, several public employee unions joined together…and proposed a plan that would save cities and towns $100 million in health care costs, the same amount as the House plan, while preserving collective bargaining,” said Lawrence. “The mayor makes these blanket statements that we stand in the way, but the reality is that we have been meeting with him for months and he has yet to offer a proposal to us. Our door is open and we are willing to work together to achieve cost savings.”

Sciortino added that he felt the situation echoed the crisis of Wisconsin and that unions “are being systematically attacked across the country by the people that would like to eliminate the role of unions in public employment as they have already done significantly in private employment.”

“I don’t think that’s the road we want to go down,” he said.