The new agreement is a proactive way to maintain reasonable health insurance rate options for Teamsters 856 members and to defend against ever-increasing health insurance premiums. It works to correct the existing inequality in the employer’s contribution to the various plans currently offered to members.
The agreement works to establish equity of County contribution levels toward medical insurance and create stability around the share of medical premiums paid by most Teamster unit members. Over 80% of unit members participating in medical are currently enrolled in the Teamsters 856 Trust Fund Kaiser Plan and importantly the agreement ensures:
- Teamsters 856 Trust Fund Kaiser Plan participants will have NO increase in their share of monthly healthcare premium costs for all of 2020 and 2021.
Click here to view the full tentative agreement.
The new healthcare agreement establishes a formula with which the County sets its contribution level toward medical insurance (initially a percentage of the “County Kaiser A Plan”). The breakdown of the formula is on page 9 of 13 of the tentative agreement. The subsidy amount contributed by the County will generally be the same regardless of the medical plan selected. While this means the employee share of medical premiums for Teamsters 856 Trust Fund Kaiser Plan participants will NOT increase throughout all of 2020 and 2021, for those participating in other plans, the employee share of the premium, will increase, decrease, or remain the same depending on the rates for the given plan selected. Replacements will be evaluated for the very expensive Health Net plans.