Our instructors examine the differing legal restrictions on negotiating retirement benefits for retirees, current employees and employees not yet hired, in both the public and private sector. They discuss bargaining issues specific to defined benefit plans, including components of the benefit formula and add-on benefits such as COLAs and service increments. The panelists also survey the advantages and disadvantages of deferred retirement option plans (DROP).
Turning their attention to health care issues, the instructors provide a breakdown of health care in the United States by the numbers, e.g., public spending, physicians per capita, premiums relative to workers` earnings, and ever rising deductibles. Learn how the struggle over health care cost allocation has gone from an afterthought in collective bargaining to the primary cause of strikes in this country. Get the answers so some important questions: how does the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) aim to "bend the cost curve"? How are employers and unions coping with the health care crisis?
This course was recorded in December 2010 at PBI`s annual Labor Law Symposium. Other sessions from this symposium are available at PBI`s Online Campus.
William Cruice, Esq., Executive Director, PA Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals, Conshohocken
Joseph C. Rudolf, Esq., Reed Smith LLP, Philadelphia
