Welcome to the new world, where medical insurance isn’t a perk but a key way people measure the value of their jobs. Consider the contract approved this week by union members at Commonwealth Edison Co.
The three-year contract, covering 9,000 members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 15, tosses out the window many mainstays of union jobs. Job levels are consolidated. Work rules are more flexible. Employees can–and must–learn more skills to earn more money.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t always an easy sell, said William H. Starr, president of Local 15.
Yet it went well. The pact was approved by 80 percent of the members. The biggest sticking point? Changes in medical insurance.
The co-payment for a doctor visit goes from $10 to $15. Union members must pay 20 percent of the insurance premium out of their paycheck, up from 18 percent. Members didn’t necessarily like the changes, but agreed with them when union managers laid out the costs of medical coverage, Starr said.
Where the union drew the line, however, was being forced into the same kind of preferred-provider network that Edison management has in its health plan.
“Our direction was to push toward managed care,” said Robert J. Manning, Edison executive vice president. “We still believe that’s very important.”
But Starr said union members working in Edison “outpost areas” feared lack of access to needed care.
Specifically, he said the membership feared that managed care would balk at letting a patient go to a specialist “out of network,” even if the local area didn’t offer the medical services needed.
Upshot: Patient choice is pretty much preserved if you’re in IBEW Local 15–more so than if you’re an Edison manager.
Harassment case: Lest anyone think the sexual harassment case against Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America Inc. is an aberration in the American workplace, think again.
Allegations in a recently settled case against Egg & I Restaurant, a popular Chicago Heights diner, also were disturbing.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit alleged the restaurant, when owned by James V. Garofalo, created a sexually hostile and offensive work environment that was so intolerable that some women were forced to quit.
The EEOC further alleged that the restaurant conditioned the waitresses’ employment on tolerating “conduct of a sexual nature.”
The lawsuit alleged that other women were fired in retaliation for complaining about sexual harassment. As well, it alleged the restaurant and Garofalo filed state lawsuits against five of the women, as another retaliatory move.
“It was along the lines of Mitsubishi, on a smaller scale,” according to Stephen G. Katz, a Barrington attorney representing six former waitresses who were plaintiff-intervenors in the EEOC case.
The restaurant, now owned by Garofalo’s son, James L., denies all allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation. Mitsubishi also denies all wrongdoing.
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“I don’t believe any sexual harassment occurred when my dad owned the restaurant, and I was never accused of sexual harassment or anything else,” said James L. Garofalo, who bought the restaurant from his father in August 1996, a month before the EEOC filed suit.
“But we had to settle this lawsuit,” he stated in a press release issued after the settlement. “It was just too expensive and too painful to continue fighting it in court.”
To settle the case, Egg & I agreed to pay $220,000, including attorneys’ fees and costs, to 11 former waitresses and hostesses. It also agreed to dismiss the state lawsuits.
To bolster its image after reaching the settlement with the EEOC last month, the restaurant’s press release included testimonials from employees.
“I have never experienced anything bad there at all,” stated one waitress.
Mitsubishi used a similar, if larger-scale, approach: a company-sanctioned employee picketing of EEOC offices.
Were the Egg & I employees content with the settlement?
“It could’ve been a lot more,” Katz said. “The problem was, it wasn’t Mitsubishi–it was a family-owned restaurant.”