The state Public Employment Relations Board has ruled that the Village of Mineola must reimburse retired union employees for medical insurance costs that they have paid since August of 2011.
Judge Angela Blassman ruled that the Village of Mineola had violated its agreement when it “unilaterally changed the past practice of paying one hundred percent of the cost of health insurance premiums for the post-1988 unit employees.”
Blassman ordered that the village stop charging retired employees for health insurance, not change the policy unilaterally in the future but only do it through a collective bargaining agreement, and compensate any retirees who had to pay for health insurance after August of 2011.
“The practice was to always pay for retirees medical insurance,” UPSEU Trustee James Gangale said. “The award kind of speaks for itself.”
Efforts to reach Mineola officials were unavailing.
The United Public Service Employees Union filed a complaint against the Village of Mineola in January of 2012 after the village started charging all employees hired after Jan. 1, 1989 for medical premiums, even if they were retired, according to the ruling.
Despite adding language into an agreement which ran from June, 1 2003 to May 31, 2007 between UPSEU and the village stating “that the Village will pay the full cost of health insurance premiums for unit employees hired before Dec. 31, 1988, and that employees hired after that date will contribute to the cost of their health insurance premiums,” the village did not seek to require employees to pay contribution for 17 years, according to the court ruling.
The provision was first included in a 1988-1991 agreement and was continued unchanged in all subsequent agreements, up to and including the 2003-2007 agreement. The court stated that until August of 2011 the Village paid “the entire cost of health insurance premiums for all unit employees upon and during their retirement.”
The Village of Mineola and UPSEU signed an updated agreement which would run from June, 1 2007 until May 31, 2012. However, after this agreement it became unclear to UPSEU that the Village of Mineola would charge retirees for health insurance.
Gangale was concerned that the word “active” was not applied to the new agreement.
“I wanted to make sure that we weren’t changing the practice there for the retirees and that this was only for active members,” Gangale testified as saying.
Mineola Village Attorney John Spellman testified that he told UPSEU that “with respect to going forward contributions it was my position that a retiree should not do better in retirement than he did in active service and that our position was that whatever your benefits were on the day you retired that is the benefits you keep in retirement.”
The Village of Mineola is required to post flyers informing employees of the changes made by the judges ruling for “30 consecutive days.”
