By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
“We’ll immediately appeal it,” said NJEA President Wendell Steinhauer.
PERC, or the Public Employment Relations Commission, recently ruled on a grey area in the 2011 pension and benefits reform law. It raised employee contributions for healthcare, to be phased in over 4 years, but unions wanted to know when the issue could return to the bargaining table?
“We were talking a lot to the legislators during that time period to get that cleared and they kept saying four years then sunset, four years then sunset,” Steinhauer said.
The law took effect at different times in different districts, depending upon current contract status. Clementon’s school district filed a petition with PERC that found that their first year of new teacher contracts coincided with the fourth year of the contribution phase — meaning that the mandate wasn’t fully met and negotiations would have to wait.
“Because the parties were still implementing the contribution, that contribution wasn’t on the negotiating table under the statue until the next contract, said Melissa Ferrara, labor and employment attorney.
The attorney representing Clementon’s school district says the teacher’s union can’t renegotiate employee contributions until the next contract is up — in 2017.
“What we thought was a four year time frame that was clear, with this decision, puts everything back into that fuzzy area again,” said Steinhauer.
The law requires workers to pay anywhere from 3 to 35 percent of their health care premium depending upon the employee’s salary.
Based on the average New Jersey teacher’s salary at just over $68,000 a year, and the most commonly chosen health plan with a premium around $28,000, the annual contribution is roughly $5,600 per employee.
Compared with the previous law — which required a blanket contribution of 1.5 percent of the employee’s salary — the worker payed about $1,000. The difference? Roughly $4,600.
“And that is, from our perspective, a very positive thing for both the educational programs for property tax payers. Chapter 78 brought employee contributions in line with what is taking place in the private sector,” said Frank Belluscio.
The New Jersey school boards association says the ruling actually helps clarify the issue.
“About a third of the school districts will be sunsetting under chapter 78. So what is significant is that if they’re in the middle of a multi-year agreement at that point they have to maintain those chapter 78 employee contributions. Once those contracts expire, the contribution levels do not go away automatically unless the board agrees to reduce them they will remain in effect,” said Belluscio
The unions say it likely we won’t see this issue put to rest anytime soon because the implications in this law affect public workers statewide.
“There’s identical language that also is contained in the statute that governs municipalities and local governments and there’s an identical provision that governs state employees and state negotiations,” said Ferrara.
And that could mean other appeals are on the way.