BJC Medical Insurance Hike
Larry Long writes:
Bechtel Jacobs has notified us that they will be raising the cost of the Pre-Age 65 medical insurance from apx. $406/mo to $812.50/mo beginning in January. They have implied in their announcement that they have to do this to comply with DOE requirements.
It is true that all of the DOE contractors must comply with these requirements, but there is a great deal of contractor latitude in how they comply. It is not true that they had to raise these piece of the benefits. BJC chose to raise this particular piece. They could have choosen to stay in compliance with the DOE requirements in other ways. The changes that they proposed are changes of convenience. They need to look closely at why the cost are as high as they are. Maybe a root cause analysis would reveal some inefficiencies, You never know when you take the convenient way out and you don't look a little.
It should be noted at this point that none of the employees hired by BJC after 1998 will receive an Oak Ridge Pension or any Oak Ridge benefits when they leave here. Kinda convenient. Also, both Y-12 and ORNL have been able to comply with these requirements without passing a 100% increase on to their Pre-Age 65 retirees.
They have supposely conducted a study and compared benefits to a list of DOE approved competitors. I wonder how this list compares to Y-12's or ORNL's list. Give me enough time and the backing to contact other DOE facilities and I believe that I can develop a very creditable list of DOE facilities that will demonstrate the need to lower the cost of our benefits to stay competitive with our competitors. I don't have the list of competitors, but it should be of other DOE sites, not Bechtel peers. After all they don't even get a pension.
The total cost of the Pre-age 65 BJC insurance is $1625.01. Based on some of my research, this cost at Y-12 is less than $1200. Wonder why! Couldn't be administrative cost could it? I don't know why, but perhaps there is some cost savings here that could cover what they are trying to do me. By the way, my total cost is over $10,000 dollars a year and that doesn't preclude them from raising it future years. Try managing that on a fixed income with gas prices and taxes. I should have kept working, but how could I have predicted this.
Now, the Oak Ridge Coalition of Retired Workers (CORRE) has been working to get DOE to bring the pensions more in line with the other DOE facilities across the country. Looks like they may have missed the boat. Our pensions are protected by law. Our medical benefits are not. Looks to me like, they plan to take our pension through our medical. Anyway, at this time, I would be happy to maintain what I had. Unless something changes between now and the first of Jan., I will have apx. $406 less each month to pay my bills. I don't expect that I will ever see a pension increase to compensate me for this, let alone an increase above that.
There are many problems with what is happening, but it appears to me that a basic change in DOE philosohies would help a great deal. DOE is continuing to split contracts and make smaller and smaller units. Folks, the sum of the parts, don't equal the whole. I'm sure that all the DOE requirements for managing a benefit program flow to each of these smaller units and they cannot begin to manage as efficiently with such a small base. They should keep the benefit groupings large to take advantage of cost savings. Put us back with Y-12 and ORNL. Many of us worked for Y-12 and ORNL for part of our careers; we just happen to be with BJC when we retired. Also, DOE should look at competing the management of our benefit package. I would love to have this contract.
Anyway, I worked many long hours for Union Carbide, Lockheed Martin, and Bechtel Jacobs and feel that I made many contributions. I don't nor do the other retirees deserve to be treated this way.
P.S. I have learned that BJC is sending us a new letter this week supposely reducing our contribution. I'll wait to see what it says before commenting further.