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health care

Pay Raises Coming for 130K Postal Employees, Along With Higher Health Care Costs

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A union representing 131,000 employees has ratified its contract with the U.S. Postal Service, providing a 4.2% pay increase for the workers but shifting more of their health care costs onto them.

The National Rural Letter Carriers Association ratified the new three-year contract after reaching a tentative deal in May. The union called the contract “fair and reasonable,” while postal management stressed it would rein in labor costs and expand the use of part-time, non-career employees. The contract is retroactive to May 2018 and will expire in May 2021.

The rural letter carriers will receive a 1.3% pay raise retroactively and three additional increases over the life of the agreement. They will also receive cost-of-living adjustments on top of those wage increases. The Postal Service, however, will drop its contributions to employees’s health care from 73% of premiums to 72%. The contract will boost health benefits for non-career rural carriers as well.

The agreement will make it easier for the Postal Service to use non-career carriers for routes outside their normal post offices. The contract also will create a task force to address the hiring and retention of the non-career employees. The two sides agreed to develop a “joint workforce improvement process” to improve the relationship between management and rural carriers while creating a safer work environment.

“Overall, this contract results in continued restraint of rural carrier labor costs while giving the parties the opportunity to focus on implementing new engineered work standards for rural carrier employees,” said Doug Tulino, USPS labor relations vice president.

Ronnie Stutts, the NRLCA president, told his members the talks with President Trump’s postal task force, the 2018 midterm elections and the Postal Service’s ongoing efforts to “rightsize” its workforce delayed negotiations and led to the expiration of the previous contract.

Eighty-six percent of union members who returned their ballots voted to ratify the contract.

NRLCA’s urban counterpart, the National Association of Letter Carriers, also avoided arbitration by reaching a voluntary agreement for its 213,000 members with the Postal Service in 2017. The American Postal Workers Union meanwhile, which represents clerks, mechanics, drivers, custodians and others, remains at an impasse with the Postal Service. The two sides are heading to a third-party arbitrator after the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service deemed them too far apart to help. USPS has sought to limit layoff protections and is offering a one-time lump-sum stipend rather than wage increases, the union said.

Senator Questions ACA Exemption for Congress

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The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management acting director seeking more for information on the OPM rule that grants an Affordable Care Act exemption to Congress and its staff.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is asking for more information on a 2013 rule that enables members of Congress and their staff to buy health insurance on the Small Business Health Options Plan (SHOP) exchange.
“The SHOP exchange is intended for employers with less than 50 employees, yet Congress employs more than 16,000 people,” Johnson wrote in his letter. “Without this classification, members of Congress and their staff would be required to purchase health insurance on the individual exchange, where no employer contributions are permitted,” he added.
Johnson filed a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration in 2014 challenging the rule, contending that it “exempt[s] members of Congress and their staff from the full effects of the Affordable Care Act.” The lawsuit was dismissed.
In 2016, Johnson submitted questions for the record requesting information about the development of the OPM rule. 
“I have yet to receive satisfactory responses from OPM,” he said in his letter.
In his latest attempt for information on the rule, Johnson is asking Acting Director Kathleen McGettigan to submit all material related to the congressional exemption and to preserve all documents related to the rule.