May 11, 2023
- Despite months of demanding to bargain over our health insurance plan, WSU has failed to bargain the insurance plan renewal and made a unilateral decision to change the 2023-2024 plan with less than a week of notice.
- The new plan (Option #3 in this PDF) is a slight improvement to our current plan (details outlined below) and lacked real input from our peers in the decision process.
- Better options were provided by our health insurance broker, but WSU said they were too expensive and refused to consider these better plans.
- This Friday, we will discuss next steps & the healthcare working group will continue to drive future bargaining proposal efforts. See the last paragraph for ways to get involved or hear more.
The details:
In early November, Academic Student Employees (ASEs) became aware that the University was considering submitting a request for insurance contract proposals. During this time, ASEs involved in these conversations have repeatedly asked how this process would intersect with the bargaining process and were told that each step of the process would be approved in bargaining. However, we have not received any follow-up on this for the past six months.
At an unrelated meeting with WSU Admin on Friday, 5/5/23, WSU notified us that they needed to finalize the healthcare plan for the upcoming year and submit it to the Washington Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) by today Wednesday, 5/10/23, ahead of their Thursday, 5/11/23 deadline. We asked for WSU’s healthcare proposal on the same day (5/5), intending to bargain over it, but did not get an answer until they met with us yesterday morning (Tuesday 5/9/23). At the 5/9 meeting, we had to press WSU to state their actual proposal, which was a new health insurance plan through United Healthcare (UHC – our current insurer) that would slightly improve vision benefits, lower the out-of-pocket max, and add a pharmacy plan (Option #3 in this PDF).
Given that WSU had given us only days to consider their proposal before the insurance plan is due to the commissioner on the 11th, our options were either to make a counterproposal with improvements or to allow the plan to go through as is. Despite the limited information we received on the matter, we made our best effort to bargain improvements and moved swiftly to respond to their proposal during yesterday’s meeting. We used the best option of the three they proposed as a starting point and proposed to significantly lower the out-of-pocket maximum, increased co-insurance coverage, and lower the copay for prescriptions, emergency care, and office visits to be closer to par with our peers at other leading universities. Our response effectively forced Admin’s hand, pressuring them to admit that they were neither planning nor willing to negotiate the healthcare plan with us.
The 2023-2024 UHC plan that WSU Admin have unilaterally decided on is indeed a slight step in the right direction in that it incorporates student feedback about lowering the out-of-pocket max and adding prescription coverage. However, without the opportunity to collectively bargain during this process, we are being excluded from a decision that not only significantly impacts the lives of individuals in our bargaining unit but other fellow students and coworkers. Admin’s actions and unwillingness to negotiate healthcare for the academic year of ‘23-’24 establishes this decision as a fait accompli – a finalized decision made for us, without sincere consideration for our voice, effectively leaving us without room to have any input in this negotiation process. In response, we have sent them a long email, detailing their negligence in providing us information and bargaining over this change. We are also weighing what additional options we may want to take.
WSU acting in this manner devalues our collective voice and disregards our agency as a bargaining unit. We will continue to demand to bargain the insurance plan for future plan years and intend to reach an agreement on a future plan that, unlike our current plan or any of the plans WSU proposed for 2023-2024, will not place ASEs’ health and lives at risk while requiring them to pay outrageous amounts for substandard care.
The events that occurred on May 9th and over the past week indicate a pattern of how WSU Admin may continue to cut us out of decision-making. We chose to form a union precisely to ensure that these decisions get bargained. We let WSU Admin know our frustration and disappointment in their actions. As your Bargaining Committee, this frustration and disappointment is weighing heavy on us knowing that we were prevented from bargaining over an aspect of our contract that affects all of us so deeply. We want you to know that we are here for you and with you. The recent actions from Admin are unacceptable. Together, we can continue to hold them accountable.
The healthcare workgroup will continue working to propose a strong healthcare plan for 2024-2025 and beyond; you can sign up here if you would like to get involved. We will discuss how we can respond further in our Friday bargaining committee meeting, which you can sign up to attend here. In addition, please forward this email to people in your department and talk with your friends and colleagues so everyone is aware that WSU has prevented us from bargaining a significantly better healthcare contract.
We recognize that this is a complicated situation with lots of difficult to understand details. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to respond to this email or reach out to contact@wsucase.org.
In Solidarity,
WSU-CASE Bargaining Committee:
Acacia Patterson, Physics & Astronomy (Pullman)
Adam Bozman, Carson College of Business – Finance (Pullman)
Andre Diehl, Comparative Ethnic Studies (Pullman)
Arianna Gonzales, Psychology (Pullman)
Aurora Brinkman, Psychology (Pullman)
Chelsea Mitchell, School of the Environment (Puyallup Research and Extension Center)
Chia-Hui Chen, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (Spokane)
Claudia Skinner, School of Languages, Cultures, and Race (Pullman)
Cody Lauritsen, College of Veterinary Medicine (Pullman)
Coty Jasper, Integrative Physiology & Neuroscience (Vancouver)
Dano Holt, School of the Environment (Pullman)
Evan Domsic, Crop and Soil Science (Mount Vernon NWREC)
Gavin Doyle, English (Pullman)
Hannah Cohen, Veterinary Clinical Sciences (Pullman)
Kartik Sreedhar, Physics & Astronomy (Pullman)
Kayla Spawton, Plant Pathology (Mount Vernon NWREC)
Kelsey King, School of Biological Sciences (Vancouver)
Miles Hopkins, School of the Environment (Pullman)
Miranda Zuniga-Kennedy, Clinical Psychology (Pullman)
Naseeha Cardwell, Chemical Engineering & Bioengineering (Pullman/Tri-Cities)
Natalie Yaw, Chemistry (Pullman)
Ninh Khuu, Plant Pathology (Prosser)
Peter Obi, Pharmaceutical Sciences (Spokane)
Raymond Bennett, Psychology (Pullman)
Rebecca Evans, Biology (Vancouver)
Shawn Domgaard, Communication (Pullman)
Tazin Rahman, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (Pullman)
Tholen Justin Blasko, Animal Sciences (Pullman)
Victor Moore, History (Pullman)
Victoria Oyanna, Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (Spokane)
Whitney Shervey, Sociology (Pullman)
Yiran Guo, Mechanical and Materials Engineering (Pullman)