DPW agrees to health care hike

Department of Public Works employees have unanimously agreed to pay more for health care.

American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Council 93 Local 1201 voted Monday to approve a contract provision that Mayor Christopher Louras said will save the city roughly $100,000 a year. The Board of Aldermen also unanimously approved the change Monday.

Employees go from having no deductible to $2,500 for a single worker and $5,000 for a two-person family. Louras said the city will pay the first 75 percent of the deductible.

This drops the premium for a single employee from $798 to $642 a month, Louras said, and that of a family from $2,098 to $1,569 a month.

Meanwhile, employee contributions will increase from 10 percent with a 4 percent salary cap in the first year to 12 percent with a 6 percent cap in the second year and 14 percent with a 7 percent cap in the third year.

Louras heaped praise on the employees Wednesday.

“The reason DPW’s doing this is because they get it,” he said. “They understand the pressures the taxpayers are under. They’re more than willing to step up to the plate and help figure out some savings.”

Board president David Allaire echoed Louras’s sentiment, and said he hoped DPW’s decision would set an example for others in city leadership.

“We’re all working very hard to trim the budget, looking for ways to save money,” he said. “To have the employees step up is good.”

Louras said the $100,000 savings number includes nonunion employees who will be subject to the same arrangement.

He said the contract also provides no pay raise in the first year and raises of 3.5 percent in the second and third years. He said a significant amount of those raises will be eaten up by the increasing contributions.

“We’re taxpayers, too,” Local 1201 president Tom Franzoni said. “We definitely don’t want to lose members and the aldermen are looking everywhere for tax savings.”

Franzoni said he and other union members took note of the town meeting vote last year for a charter change requiring municipal employees to pay 20 percent of their health care costs. The Legislature shot down the change, but Franzoni said city workers felt the taxpayers’ pain and wanted to show they understood.

Still, Franzoni said he was not expecting a unanimous vote.

“I was shocked as anybody when I was at the meeting,” he said. “We explained it and people got in line and voted for it. ... Nobody was grumbling about having to pay more for health care.”

gordon.dritschilo @rutlandherald.com