Negotiating changes in employee health benefits is not for the faint of heart.

A specialist in labor and employment law, Chicago attorney Ted Clark,* says unions nationwide are using worker concern about health benefits as an organizing tool. Once unions get to the negotiating table they are digging in their heels to prevent benefits from being cut.

Still, Clark adds, there are steps employer negotiators can take to boost their chances of success.

• Employers should be willing to share with labor information about how the organization’s benefits costs are rising and why action is needed if the organization is to continue to afford them.
• Employers should be willing to listen to employee concerns.
• Employers and workers should be willing to take a methodical approach to change.

“Open the door and gradually get employees to buy in to the proposition that they need to share in the cost of providing this benefit,” Clark says.

Clark says the health-benefits issues confronting public-sector organizations such as school districts are the same as for the private sector. However, school districts have at least one significant advantage over the private sector: equity.

In the typical school district, Clark says, all employees – management and labor alike – are covered by health plans with essentially the same terms and conditions. So in negotiations, the management team can say to the union side, “‘We’re not asking you to do something we’re unwilling to do as well.’”

Clark says that in the private sector, “corporate honchos” frequently have significantly different provisions in their health plans.

“I’ve got to believe that rankles the unions to no end,” Clark says.

*Clark is with the National Public Employer Labor Relations Association