ANTI LIE: VTA stole district insurance funds

ANTI North County Times blogger "Plain Truth" posted on August 25, 2009, 11:33 am after the Richard Kirk attack piece this lie or paranoid fantasy, “within a few years after taking control of the board the union plundered the insurance premiums.”

Gee Plain Truth where is the truth? Plundered the insurance premiums? Oh really? On what planet paranoid is that possible? Insurance premiums go to insurance companies.

If you mean the teachers had health insurance that cost too much? Probably. Because we all think insurance costs too much.

For much of the 1990s we had only two insurance companies to negotiate with. They quoted very similar rates to our umbrella trust/insurance company called the South Counties Employer Employee Trust. This was the trust that our district obtained all it benefits through—medical, dental, optical, life insurance. A trust is kind of like a Co-op that is being talked about now in Congress by the Republicans. VUSD through our trust, SCEET, really had little choice about what we paid for insurance because of the lack of competition. But all insurance premiums went to our insurance companies or we would not have had coverage and we did have coverage.

Also you should know that the greater the insurance premium we were charged by the monopolistic FOR PROFIT private insurance companies, the lower the teacher pay became. Why, you ask?

Because in the mid 1980’s Pete McHugh one of our district assistant superintendents decreed that all contract negotiations would be base on TOTAL COMPENSATION not just on salary.

Total compensation included the massive cost increases in our insurance coverage. These massive increased costs from the FOR PROFIT insurance carriers had to be deducted from teacher salary under the TOTAL COMPENSATION contract negotiation system forced on the VTA. Before that total compensation negotiations, insurance coverage was always a given--a right that every worker had from his or her employer. At that time only salaries were included in negotiations.