Health premium payments cause snare

The city government has hit a bump in ongoing efforts to negotiate a new contract with many of its employees.

Scott Symer, president of the Lake Oswego Municipal Employees Association, made an appeal to the city council Tuesday night to hold the line on employee contributions to their medical insurance plans.

When employee benefits were last negotiated in 2009, he said, the city asked workers to “go back to paying a portion” of health insurance premiums. Although the union was concerned that rolling back benefits would become a trend, in the end it conceded to an agreement requiring employees to contribute 5 percent of their health premiums.

Now, the city wants to double the employee share to 10 percent.

“This is not a road your employees want to go down,” Symer said, calling the move a “slippery slope with no end in sight.”

The cost of city employees’ health care premiums increased 5 percent this year, he said. The city’s proposal appears to be “cost shifting for the sake of cost shifting,” Symer said.

City officials declined to comment on the ongoing bargaining process with municipal employees.

But the city council recently adopted agreements with other groups of employees.

Those agreements included changes to benefits for managers and confidential staff members that required them to pay more toward health insurance premiums. Last year, management contributed 5 percent, and this year those employees will pay 7.5 percent. Next year managers are facing proposed 10 percent increases in their health care contributions.

In April, the council approved two-year contracts for both the police and firefighters unions.

The police contract requires employees to pay about $43 to $71 toward their monthly premiums, with the amount varying depending on their chosen insurance programs. Any annual increase of more than 10 percent in insurance costs would be split 50-50 with police association members, with a maximum contribution of 5 percent of their monthly premiums, according to the contract.

The firefighters’ agreement requires fire department employees to pay 5 percent of their monthly medical and dental premiums, with maximum amounts ranging depending on their chosen health insurance plans.