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Do you like to play golf?
Even if you're not Arnold Palmer, we urge you to join us on
June 18 for the annual DSEA Future Teacher Benefit Golf
Tournament.
The deadline to sign up is June 15.
This year's scholarship winner, Jason Buchler of Indian River High School,
will receive $4,000 - that's how successful this benefit tournament is.
Join the fun!
It’s
summertime!
Theme Park discount information coming in every day
Check out updated information about discounted theme park tickets and other
summer time fun on the DSEA Discount List page.
Log in at the DSEA web page
and then click on Discount List from the left-hand column.
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Treating
everyone fairly is a bedrock union position
by Diane Donohue, president, DSEA
The Markell Administration is proposing changing our current
health care and pension systems by adding
additional "tiers," i.e., keeping the current
system for current employees, and adding another system which would cost
future employees much more, for
the same level of health care benefits. The pension system would not only
require more buy-in from future employees but require them to work
longer.
We cannot stand by and allow two-tiered plans to happen. As one union leader
from our State Workers United Coalition said recently, “If we approve
this, we’re condemning our children and grandchildren who choose to work
for the state, to have less than we have. Why would we want less for
them? This is not the legacy I want to pass on to my kids and
grand-kids.”
“Selling out the unborn” is how another state union official put it.
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• YOUR BENEFITS •
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The
best way to protect your current benefits is to oppose two-tiered plans
DSEA and the Coalition of State Workers United for a Better
Delaware, to which we belong, is opposing a plan by the Markell
Administration to convince the General Assembly to require new state
workers hired after January 1 of next year to pay more – a whole lot more
- than current employees in order to obtain the same health care
benefits; and pay more into the pension system, as well as require them
to work longer in order to receive that same pension.
While the health benefits themselves would not change - at this time -
under the Administration’s plan, new employees would be paying more than
100% more than current employees for the same health care coverage!
A state employee making $20,000/year
would have to pay 19.32%
of their salary, $3,864/year, in order to have the First
State Basic Family Plan.
Consider a newly hired paraprofessional who makes $17,228 per year. Under
the Markell proposal if this para wants to insure her family, she will
pay $322.07 every
month. Let us be honest: that para will not insure her
family, and those kids will either go without health care or be forced to
utilize Medicaid. Is that a proud moment for the First State, her own
public servants on public assistance?
For pensions, the administration would like new employees to pay 4.5% of
their salary into the pension system. Currently, you pay 3% of your
salary after earning your first $6,000.
So, a new hire earning $30,000 who elects to enroll in family coverage
will decrease their take-home pay by a total of $4,494, thanks to
increases in health care and pension contributions.
This
equals a 15% reduction in pay!
As their contributions increase, the state's contribution - under this
proposal - will decrease. For
a new hire’s monthly premium, the state's contribution would decline
from 88%/single, 87% family to 74% single and 66% family.
In Maryland, the state contributes 80% of the cost of family
coverage; Pennsylvania, 93%; New Jersey 97%; and in Virginia, 89%.
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• YOUR FUTURE •
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“You’re
telling me that my health care benefits and pension won’t change. What's wrong with
that?”
Why do you have the health care and a pension benefits you
have today?
What if your senior colleagues had decided to trade away your benefits
for their own short-term gain?
What if you could not afford health care for yourself or your children?
You have health care and pension today because educators
before you fought for them, lobbied for them, even went on strike for
them. Would you be willing to do the same? Would you fight for a younger
colleague, a son, daughter, niece, nephew, who will decide to teach in
the near future?
Perhaps our history teachers will remember the words of Benjamin
Franklin, “We shall all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang
separately.”
• What will happen to collegiality and collaboration when the person
working next to you can’t afford to see a doctor, but they know you
have a full benefit package?
• How will your union be an effective voice for your rights when
solidarity has been destroyed?
• It doesn’t take long for the benefits of current employees to be
affected.
Yes, that’s right. In a few years, the numbers of current employees will
dwindle - through retirement and resignation - and the numbers of
employees hired after January 1, 2011 will grow. As new employees begin
to number more and more, they will ask why we let this happen, and demand
from DSEA that we fight for equal benefits. History has shown that
legislators will work to make everyone happy by compromising: bringing up
the benefits of the “new” employees and reducing the benefits of the
older employees.
So yes, you will
be affected.
The best way to
protect your current benefits is to oppose two-tiered plans.
We DO support working to find savings
in health care.
We are willing and eager to work with state officials on
finding savings in health care but will not be boxed in to finding them
only through two-tiered plans. Nor do we understand why the
Administration is proposing such draconian measures: health care premium
payments that are more than twice what current employees pay for the
same health care; and more pension payments with fewer retirement
options.
In addition, we still insist, as does the Coalition, that we
all need to know how Delaware’s insurance rates are set – basic
information – before we can work on where costs can be saved. Since last
year, we have asked for this information so that we can relate rates to
claims history to premiums, and we are consistantly told that this
information is not available. How can that be? No answer. As a
result, we have no assurance that rates are set
accurately.
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• YOUR FUTURE •
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Yes,
Delaware's Pension Plan is fully funded
There is no economic reason to change the state's pension
system, as the Markell Administration is trying to do for new state
employees. It is well-funded and does extremely well in its investments.
The state has no reason to "fix it" because it is not broken.
For us, and the members of State Workers United for a Better Delaware,
there is no economic reason to require new state employees to contribute
more and work longer to be eligible for a state pension.
This week, a reporter from WDEL 1150-AM radio led a news
story about the Governor’s proposals with a completely false
statement that “Delaware’s pension system is underfunded by $1 trillion.”
When questioned, she said it came from the Governor’s e-mail to all state
employees. When she read it again, she noticed that it said that
nationwide, state pension systems are underfunded by $1 trillion. And, in
fact the Governor noted in his message to you that, "In Delaware,
our pension plan for state employees is one of the better funded in the
country." She is changing her lead.
The real test of the health of the state's finances, including its
pension fund, is to look at the state's bond rating. An unfunded pension
system would seriously affect that rating, which saves the state millions
of dollars each year if it is good, and it is AAA, Triple A.
The pension system is not broken: it does not need to be fixed.
CALL
TO ACTION
The General Assembly reconvenes next Tuesday, June 1. Join our
Coalition members in lobbying your legislators, both Representatives
and Senators.
Tell them that the pension system is healthy, well-funded and does not
need to be "fixed."
And that two-tiered health care systems are unfair; create
severe morale problems in the workplace; will not attract the best
workers to state government. In addition, the Administration's
current proposal will drive many new state employees onto the Medicaid
roles who cannot afford losing so much of their pay, adding cost to the
state, not savings.
For a complete contact list of
state legislators, click here.
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• YOUR PROFESSION •
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Full-time
teachers who began teaching in Delaware in the fall of 2007 or later:
Please complete working conditions survey by June 7
Chance
to win $50 gift certificate from Amazon
To improve the reliability of the data collected and to
entice you further, the University is awarding a $50 Amazon.com gift
certificate to three randomly selected teachers who have completed the new teacher working conditions
survey.
Just log onto the DEEDS website.
Then under "What Can I Do Today?", click on "Take
Survey." Then click on "Delaware Teacher Survey."
Thank you!
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