Health Care Plan Changes Approved

On Monday, November 26 statewide administration informed JHCC leadership of their intent to go forward with JHCC's nine motions and changes to our FY14 health care benefit. Click here to read the memorandum.

Opt Out Information

 The explanation from Donald Smith, CHRO and Erika Van Flein, Director of Benefits for ending the Opt Out option is that it will increase the size of the employee pool, which will theoretically decrease the health care costs for all employees. Employees currently cover 17% of the total health care costs of university employees. Ending the Opt-Out option will spread that 17% over a greater number of people. A counterpoint to this position is that it is also possible that some of those opt outs brought back into the pool will bring high health care costs increasing total health care costs.

Currently there are 473 (of a total of ~4,500) employees who will be impacted by taking away the Opt Out option. Some hard to define costs associated with this decision are: the number of employees who will leave the university as a result, the costs of replacing those employees, the possible additional costs to the plan, and more importantly the impact of another reduction in benefits or increase in cost of benefits to the morale of our employees. The potential benefit is decreasing the overall cost each employee pays.

What are your thoughts on the administration’s explanation and position on this?

JHCC Recommended Changes to Health Care Benefit

From the UA Staff Alliance blog at http://www.uastaffalliance.wordpress.com :

**Please note the JHCC memorandum has been updated from the original post.

On October 16 and 17 the Joint Health Care Committee met to review the suggestions coming out of the Health Care Task Force.  At that meeting they passed eight motions recommending changes to our health care benefit to the statewide administration.  They forwarded these motions to the administration on November 1. Please read JHCC Oct Motions for details.

Two changes were recommended that have received mixed responses from staff. They are a spousal surcharge and taking away the Opt Out choice. Please note that the staff representatives on the JHCC voted against taking away the Opt Out. The Staff Health Care Committee will meet on November 27 to discuss these changes. We’d like to hear from you before we take a position with the administration on the changes. Please leave your comments here and/or email Donald Smith, Chief Human Resources Officer at donald.smith@alaska.edu or Juella Sparks, chair of Staff Alliance at juella.sparks@alaska.edu .

FY14 Staff Compensation Increase Update - Memo from President Gamble and Request for Staff Feedback

To All Non-Represented Staff,

On November 1 Staff Alliance members received a memorandum from UA President Pat Gamble regarding the staff compensation increase for the FY14 budget. He has included a 3.25% compensation increase in the operating budget being brought before the Board of Regents Wednesday Nov. 7 for their approval.

Please go the Staff Alliance blog at: http://www.uastaffalliance.wordpress.com to read President Gamble's explanation and to tell us what you think of this compensation increase. To submit your feedback, click on the words ‘Leave a Comment’ located on the grey bar immediately below the message.  We will report back on how the Regents vote.

Alliance has also started a conversation on with President Gamble on other ways to meaningfully compensate and reward staff. Please use the blog to provide us with your thoughts and ideas.  You can post your feedback on the blog using the blue 'Leave a Comment' link located below the message.   

UA Staff Alliance