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When picking a health plan for their workers, Chicago-area employers’ top priority is: A. pinching pennies; B. finding the best care based on reliable performance data; C. how easy it is to set up a meeting with a doctor.
Nope, none of the above. Employers’ No. 1 objective, according to a survey by KPMG Peat Marwick LLP, was the number and quality of physicians in the program. Then came the accuracy and speed of the payment system and employee satisfaction with the plan.
Cost, the cold reality driving the shift to managed care, ranked fourth in the survey for local employers. In contrast, costs ranked second in importance to Midwestern employers in general.
The good news from the survey, says David Walker, head of the firm’s Midwest compensation and benefits practice, is that employers consider a number of factors besides cost. “They are still loath to slam-dunk (workers) into an HMO in the Midwest as compared to the West,” he adds.
The bad news, he suggests, is that too few workers and bosses pay attention to data that detail physicians’ past performance. The problem, he admits, is that consumers do not know where to find such information, and when they do it is difficult to understand.
Mea culpa: We apologize. Our ears were ringing with victory cheers for the Teamsters’ showdown with United Parcel Service of America. That’s our excuse for ignoring the nationwide precedent set by the 40 workers at Borders Inc.’s store No. 101 in Lakeview on Chicago’s North Side.
The workers recently reached a contract with the Ann Arbor, Mich., firm, making them the first to win a union pact in the swiftly growing universe of chain mega-book-and-music stores. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union also represents Borders workers in West Des Moines, Ia., Bryn Mawr, Pa., and New York’s World Trade Center.
But UFCW Local 881 was the first to sign a contract. The workers get a 50-cent raise in the first year of their 28-month contract, followed by 4.5 percent increases the next two years. The union is tickled, saying it won a closed shop and a ban on at-will firings.
Borders officials are not tickled about having a union on hand.
They add, however, that the salary package is not different from what employees regularly get. Workers at the firm’s 190 stores get annual merit raises that go from zero to 6 percent. But these are based on how employees and the company perform.
Enough is enough: In an era when strikes are as obsolete as good handwriting, 1,200 workers at the Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. plant near Ft. Wayne, Ind., walked out Friday.
Three years ago, the company, owned by France’s Michelin, threatened to shut the plant if the workers did not accept 12-hour shifts that rotate from days to nights monthly. The workers relented.
This time the workers, members of United Steelworkers of America Local 715, say they cannot accept the company’s offer, which calls for work-rule changes. The union and company had been bargaining since August. The workers say they were riled by the way the company has been enforcing work rules.
“With what they have been doing to the people, there is nothing we could have accepted,” says Herb Anderson, secretary of the union local.
While not threatening to close the plant, the company views the dispute as a make-or-break factor in its future. In the last four years, the plant has lost $100 million, and another loss is likely this year, said company spokeswoman Athene Karis. “A long walkout doesn’t contribute to the prospects of a future for the plant,” she says.
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Stephen Franklin can be reached at [email protected]