TWU Health Worries

To the Editor:

I wish to clarify the statement I made in your publication last week as I do not wish to appear to be just some disgruntled Local 100 member. In Local 100's previous round of negotiations in 2002, we took a zero in the first year of our contract due to a $40-million deficit in our health benefit trust and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's claims they were in the red. We also gave up control of our share of the health benefit trust to the MTA to insulate us from rising health-care costs in the future.

Before the ink was dry on that contract, it was discovered that the MTA had a surplus of hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2005 it was learned the MTA saved over $92 million in health-benefit costs over their 2002 projections, and had a surplus of over a billion dollars.

And despite all this, including giving up our share of the benefit trust, for the first time, Local 100 had to pay health-care premium costs - the now infamous 1.5 percent. That was the backdrop of me stating that Local 100's last two rounds of negotiations were failures in the area of health-care coverage.

That 1.5 percent has been the talk of not just our union, but of all unions in New York, in particular those in the public sector. There were three reasons given for the 1.5 percent to both the executive board and then to the membership: 1. it would help end the strike; 2. it would secure the pension refund; and 3. it would give our retirees full medical benefits until Medicare. So for Roger Toussaint to make the statement that public-sector workers need to get used to paying for their health care is a direct slap in the face to every member of Local 100.

We never once discussed the 1.5 percent in the context of paying for our own medical benefits but for our brothers and sisters who had retired and were without medical coverage. For President Toussaint to now flip the script and say that our 1.5 percent is for anything but retired medical coverage would be very dishonest of him. I know what was said because I was on the executive board at the time, and, in fact, specifically talked about working towards getting the 1.5 percent eliminated or lowered in the next contract. Now our own president is telling us to "get over it, the trend is to have workers paying for their health care." I want to go on record and apologize to the members of Local 100 for my part in accepting the 1.5 percent, and will do everything in my power to eliminate or reduce it as we vowed to do on the previous executive board.

My biggest concern in all of this is that President Toussaint, after two failed rounds of negotiations in the area of health care, still has not put together a committee to deal with the issue of health-care costs in Local 100. In fact, the most knowledgeable person in Local 100 in the area of health-care costs - Mike Jerome, the former Health Benefit Coordinator for Local 100 - was relieved of his duties as said coordinator.

However, Mike is a true trade-unionist and has agreed to help me set up a health-care committee to see what we can do on this subject. The first step needs to be comparative studies on how much money the 1.5 percent is costing the members of Local 100 and how much the MTA is spending on retiree health coverage for Local 100 members.

Anyone wishing to join Mike and myself can e-mail us at onepointfive@homestationonline.org. It is of the utmost importance that we not go into another round of negotiations without Local 100 members knowing all the facts and figures about the MTA and our health-care costs.

MARVIN HOLLAND, Former Member of Local 100 Executive Board