Classified school employees are accusing Sweet Home School District administrators of reducing their hours to prevent them from being able to get fully paid health insurance coverage from the district.
At issue is a section of the contract between the local chapter of the Oregon School Employees Association and the district that dictates eligibility for district-paid insurance premiums. The disagreement largely centers on interpretation of what that contract means, both sides agree.
Velma Canfield, president of the local chapter of the Oregon School Employees Association, read a prepared statement to the board at its Sept. 10 meeting complaining about “the systematic destruction of our ability to continue to maintain health insurance for ourselves and our families.”
Supt. Don Schrader said last week that, as far as he is aware, the district has lived up to its commitments and no employees have lost any insurance benefits – at least as district administrators read the contract.
Canfield said one reason for her appearance at the board meeting was a discussion of raises for district administrators, which was tabled to give Board Chairman Jason Redick a chance to discuss it with high school Principal Keith Winslow.
Canfield noted that, while the teachers received step wage increases in their contract, ratified in June, and Schrader was given a 1 percent raise in August, classified employees agreed in contract negotiations last spring “to take no steps because they told us they had no money.”
But the union proceeded under the understanding that employees who qualified for health insurance benefits would continue to receive those benefits, she said. Instead, the district has reduced the hours of five employees who were taking full-time insurance benefits, removing their eligibility for such benefits.
Schrader said the district and union “weren’t in agreement” on the interpretation of the meaning of 6½ hours when the school year started.
Part of the problem, he said, is that the contract with the union was written when the school week was 40 hours. Some employees, he said, were confused over whether insurance is based on hours per day or hours per week. The district’s position is that it is the latter.
“If we had a person that works only two days a week for 14 hours at seven hours per day, should they receive full coverage?” he asked. “Another person who works four days a week, six hours a day, only gets 75 percent. That just doesn’t make sense. It’s total hours per week, not per day.”
Canfield agreed that there is a difference in interpretation.
“We interpret it to be by the day because that’s what they contract states,” she said, adding that she is not aware of any classified employees who only work two days a week. “We calculate by how many hours we work per day. Insurance has never been calculated based on the week. That’s where the hang-up is. It comes down to interpretation of what we’re talking about.”
Canfield said the contract states that employees must work at least 6 1/2 hours per day – 26 hours a week – for the district to completely cover the cost of their insurance benefits. Those who work between five and 6.4 hours per day qualify for 75 percent coverage of premiums by the district, and those who work four to 4.9 hours qualify for 50 percent coverage.
She said those who don’t qualify for full coverage were, last year, able to pay the increased personal costs of their insurance by working the extra day. She said the district initially agreed to let employees in that situation work an extra half hour a day so they could qualify for full coverage.
Of the approximately 15 people she knows of who fall into that category, five were actually expected to enroll, she said. As of last Friday, one of them isn’t taking health insurance at all because that employee lost a day’s wages and didn’t get the extra half hour they were promised, she said.
That employee would have had to pay another $590 per month to have insurance with a $1,000 deductible.
“This is the part that kills me,” she said. “All the district had to do was pay $12,900 and we wouldn’t be having this issue right now.”
Shrader said he talked to an employee last week whose hours had been cut before last school year, from 100 percent to 75 percent of full-time. This year her daily hours went up, though her weekly hours were reduced. The question was whether she qualified for more insurance coverage.
“That’s a different scenario,” he said. “In that case I kind of feel like it wasn’t because of the four-day school week bue because of other issues. I’ll get to the bottom of those issues.”
Canfield said the outcome will be the result of how the district interprets the contract.
Schrader said the district is not going to reduce employees’ insurance coverage.
“From the very beginning we said this isn’t going to affect anybody’s insurance. We haven’t taken anybody’s insurance away. If they qualified last year, they qualify this year. If we paid 100 percent last year, we’re paying 100 percent this year. If they had full coverage last year, they should still have full coverage this year.
“If Velma knows of an employee whose insurance has been reduced, I’ll look into that.”
Canfield promised that the union will bring up the insurance issue when contract talks start next year.
“This will be a hot topic when we go to negotiations in spring,” she said. “This is the one issue we could not agree on in in-term bargaining last spring. We told the district that we were going to live by the language of our contract.
“The district is making money off the people who don’t take insurance. It seems silly to me that we even have to have this conversation.”
Union members, along with employees represented by other local unions, met with Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian on Tuesday, Sept. 11, for a picnic at Ashbrook Park, for a pre-election rally. Avakian is running for re-election against state Sen. Bruce Starr. Canfield said the meeting was “really an eye-opener,” adding that she came away with the perspective that Starr “wants to do right-to-work, like they did in Wisconsin – break the unions.”
In her address Canfield also blasted the move to a four-day school week, which the union has opposed from the beginning, calling it “an almost unilateral decision.”
She said “a majority of local residents stated clearly in the surveys that were done that there was no interest in shortening the school week, thereby shortening our children’s’ educational opportunities.
“We are here tonight to tell you enough is enough. This school board and the current superintendent have made decisions in the last few months regarding the educational opportunities for the children in our community that we believe will have an extremely negative impact on our children and our community.”