Presidents Message

I can’t say that I am surprised that Philadelphia Finance Director Rob Dubow is using the recent study by the Pew Charitable Trusts on the costs of health and pension benefits in the City as a way to lay the groundwork for a call to reduce benefits and increase co-pays by City employees.

This is a tactic that was very much in vogue during the Rendell Administration, where Dubow previously worked. Times have changed since then, especially for the members of District Council 33.

The Pew study laments the fact that the City cannot directly control health care costs for all employees because it is contractually obligated to make contributions to each union’s health and welfare fund. This is exactly what many major corporations with unionized work forces are starting to do in contract negotiations that are going on right now. It is what GM, Ford and other large auto makers are doing in order to shift the responsibility of securing health benefits for workers over to their unions.

The Pew study called for a joint labor-management study to find ways to cut health care costs. What has not been mentioned in the press coverage is that the City has representation on all of the major union funds, just not a controlling vote on decision making.

What is also not mentioned is that fact that the City’s representatives on the District Council 33 Health and Welfare Fund have almost always agreed with the reforms that we have made over the past decade.

The fact of the matter is that District Council 33 receives the lowest health benefit contribution per capita from the City for our members and yet we are able, through tough bargaining with our health benefit providers, to continue to provide good health benefits that reward our members for participating in programs that increase their wellness and productivity.

These programs, which District Council 33 has initiated independent of the political motivations of other interested parties, has resulted in even lower health care costs overall.

On the pension issue, our District Council 33 representative on the Pension Fund was recently unjustly criticized in the media for attending educational seminars of the exact sort that the Pew study recommends. The Pension Fund already conducts careful audits of its fund and the DROP program does work the way it was designed for City employees.

With health care costs steadily increasing across the country, we are still able to bargain an excellent health and pension benefit package for our members; one that improves their health and productivity and yet still costs the City less per member than any other union.

You would think that the Pew Foundation would applaud our efforts, especially in light of the hard times that the health care industry is placing on many U.S. citizens.

However, we have never supported the philosophy that calls for balancing the City’s fiscal problems on the back of our members when the real causes have been bad decision making by political leaders in other areas of City government.

The Pew study lists a host of recommendations that are repetitions of the same tired old responses of the past. The record of the reforms that District Council 33 has backed and achieved during the last decade shows that our union is ahead of the curve working on real solutions that can actually work.

Maybe the researchers at Pew would have produced a better set of recommendations if they had taken the time to get all of the facts and understand the impact of all of the actions that District Council 33 has taken instead of just producing a report that validates their false pre-conceived notion that unions like ours don’t know what we are doing and that management can always do it better.

I believe the City would be better served not by taking directions recommended by an ill-informed study by an outside party but by working cooperatively with District Council 33 to find solutions that actually work.

We stand ready and are willing to work in a cooperative manner with Mayor Nutter and his Administration on both health and pension benefit issues.