Jim DeLine's Website / Blog

During most of my years working for the City of Lansing, I was a steward for the Teamsters Supervisory Bargaining Unit serving on the negotiating team. In negotiations, we often were willing to accept lower wage increases and sacrifice certain other benefits to make sure we secured good retirement healthcare. To that end, we even allowed the City to withhold a portion of our pay that was to be directed toward those benefits. Other Teamster bargaining units, plus UAW, police and fire units negotiated their own versions of retiree healthcare with varying levels of contribution.

Now we learn that those negotiations weren’t worth the paper they are written on. No matter what level of contributions to retiree healthcare each union negotiated, all retirees are to be given a cookie cutter retiree healthcare plan. And one more costly than we planned on.

Mayor Schor’s slap in the face to labor agreements is unconscionable. And this issue could impact every employee who thought they had an agreement with their employer. Are you next?