GE union talks before talks begin

LYNN – A union official for General Electric workers expressed concern that cuts to health benefits for management and salaried employees will be proposed to union members in contract negotiations this summer.?Everything they do to management and (salaried employees) in contracts, they have tried to do to the unions in the renewed contracts,” Ric Casilli, business agent at IUE/CWA Local 201 and a member of the national GE union contract negotiation committee, said last week. “Everybody knows they are coming to the table to do the same to us.”Meanwhile, a federal judge rejected an injunction filed to stop the cuts; but allowed a suit to progress that is challenging them.A GE spokesman said that any contract negotiations “will require constructive compromise.”?While I can?t say for sure or not whether there will be changes proposed for (age) 65 and older union members, I know that benefits will be discussed as well as other key elements such as retirement plans and wages,” GE spokesman Rich Gorham said Monday.GE announced in September 2012 that it would end Medicare supplement plans and eliminate life insurance for salaried, non-union management employees beginning Jan. 1 of this year. This meant that employees had to be over 65 and retired by that point to keep their existing coverage.Last September, GE extended the benefit cuts to those non-union, salaried management employees already over 65 years old. It also replaced the supplemental coverage with a $1,000 annual payment per employee and spouse towards a supplemental health care plan on a private health care exchange.In total, about 65,000 people countrywide were affected.Two GE retirees – a retired chief union negotiator and a former senior corporate benefits executive – filed a suit last October in the Eastern District of Wisconsin alleging that GE violated federal law by dropping the supplemental health coverage and putting retirees in a health care exchange.The pair asked for a jury trial and a preliminary injunction against the change, arguing that GE broke promises stated in an employee handbook to keep the benefits indefinitely unless there were changes in federal or state law governing the plans.In a Dec. 30 ruling, Judge Lynn Adelman denied the request to stop the plans from changing, noting that 53,000 people had already switched to a private health care exchange as of Dec. 14. But Adelman also ruled that the lawsuit could continue.?Employers should not be encouraged to promise attractive benefits to employees and create the impression that such benefits will continue as long as certain circumstances do not occur and then eliminate the benefits even though such circumstances do not occur,” Adelman wrote. He noted that GE did not stop the plans for reasons cited in the employee handbook, but “appears to have terminated the plans to save money.”In filings to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, GE had estimated the cuts would save the company $832 million, according to a report in The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky.Gorham said that the benefit change is “consistent with large companies in the U.S., and is a change that will allow us to strike a balance among our obligations to employees, retirees and shareowners.”Casilli said that the changes had not affected any union members in Lynn, but forced many non-union salaried members to retire earlier than planned to retain their health and other benefits.?If you?re at GE and 67 and didn?t retire, you would have lost everything – your medical, your life insurance, and wouldn?t have gotten anything,” Casilli said.The union was also “not naive” that the cuts would not be proposed in contract negotiations, which begin in June.Casilli said these negotiations would affect about 1,200 people currently working at the GE Lynn facility and 20-30,000 retirees from the plant.Gorham said that he could not say what specific options would be presented during contract negotiations, but negotiations would be held, as always