CWA Responds to Sen. Sweeney’s Health Care Benefits Proposal

WOODBRIDGE, NJ --  New Jersey’s largest union representing public workers responded today to Senate President Stephen Sweeney’s proposal to cut health care benefits for New Jersey’s public workers.  Hetty Rosenstein, state director for the Communications Workers of America, said:

“Senator Sweeney's attempt to legislate premium levels and create a complex layering of benefit plans wrongly injects the legislature into negotiations that should be reserved for collective bargaining between public employees and their employers.  Health care coverage has always been part of the mix of wages and benefits that workers negotiate on their own behalf.

“Sweeney's proposals are also bad policy.  Basing employees' costs on a percentage of premium unfairly shifts the risk for the health of the entire state workforce onto individual employees, while delivering an enormous pay cut to thousands of middle-class families; creating a complicated tiered plan structure will lead to spiraling costs for families with sick children.  

“Moreover, Sweeney's proposals don't address the fundamental issue of rising health care costs, choosing instead to merely shift the cost onto working people without negotiation.”