Cambridge Hospital nurses won a fight against the Cambridge Health Alliance when the Commonwealth Employment Relations Board ruled Friday that a unilateral cut in retiree health benefits was not warranted before completing collective bargaining with the Massachusetts Nurses Association unit, the Boston Herald reports.
The decision resolved an issue that has been brewing since June, when the alliance chopped nurse retiree health benefits by 40 percent and raised their required contributions to half of the insurance premium price. The cuts were made after the nurses union rejected management's final offer to rework benefits, according to the Boston Globe.
The alliance must reinstate benefits, as a result of Friday's employment board decision. It has 30 days to appeal the ruling. After the alliance offered to let nurses who agreed to retire by the end of August to maintain the full health benefit, which covers 90 percent of retirees' health care costs, 13 nurses opted to take the "forced retirement."
The alliance told the Globe that cuts to employee retirement benefits are needed to keep the financially struggling hospital group afloat. "It doesn't change the fact that the money to fund this doesn't exist," spokesman Doug Bailey said.
The cuts will help compensate for an accounting change that raised expenses by $12 million a year, Alliance officials said, contributing to its $27 million deficit for FY 2009. In the past two years the chain has made many cuts to services and resources. The cuts include 450 full-time positions, six of its 26 health centers, and phasing out 35 adult psychiatric beds. Without the retirement concessions, the Alliance had estimated it would have had to lay off 100 additional workers.
Cambridge Health Alliance and union representatives next head back to the bargaining table to devise a retiree health benefits solution for more than 325 nurses at Cambridge Hospital.
"Our position will be the same," Alliance spokesman Doug Bailey told the Globe. "We need to make this cut."
To learn more:
- read the full text of the board's ruling (via the Massachusetts Nurses Association site)
- here's the notice Cambridge Hospital posted for employees
- read the Boston Globe article
- see the Boston Herald article