THE
UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA
STAFF
SENATE
(NORMAN
CAMPUS)
Wednesday,
July 18, 2007
Chair Betty Love called the meeting
to order at 1:39 p.m. in the Scholars Room of the Oklahoma Memorial Union.
Officers present — Betty
Love, Chair; Chris McNabb, Recording Secretary
Officers absent — Beth
Gatewood, Chair-Elect; Joan Koos, Immediate Past Chair
Staff present — Barbara
Perry, Administrative Coordinator; Shanika Bivines, Administrative Assistant
Representatives present —
Hourly Employees Council: Ed Fontaine, Diana Fitzpatrick, Karen Stark, Patsy
Montoya, Troy Schmidt, Robert Murphy, Ben Stapp, David Houck, Kim Haddad, David
Kizer; Informational Staff Association: Anna Love; Organizational Staff
Council: Linda McCarty, Cathy Brister, Kathy Gross, Matt Berry, Jannie Porter;
Administrative Staff Council: Rennie Cook
Representatives absent — Hourly
Employees Council: Cindy Goode, Cheryl Barton; Informational Staff Association:
Brook Barnes-Weber, Lisa Bowles, Elaine Bradshaw, Debi Gentis, one vacancy;
Organizational Staff Council: Winona Bark; Administrative Staff Council: Sue-Anna
Miller
Guests present —
Debbie Copp, Employment Benefits Committee; Nick Kelly, Human Resources; Julius
Hilburn, Human Resources; Paul Arcaroli, Human Resources; Kris Glenn, Parking
and Transportation Services; Theta Dempsey, Parking and Transportation
Services; Cody Ponder, Parking and Transportation Services; Annette Schwiebert,
Information Technology; Susan Grossman, College of Continuing Education; Cathy
Trujillo, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; James Tyree, The
Oklahoman
REPORT REGARDING CART SERVICES BY KRIS GLENN
Chair Betty Love introduced Kris Glenn from
Parking and Transportation Services and thanked Kris for the hand-outs he
provided for the members. Kris
began by saying that OU Parking and Transportation Services ran the CART
system. He then gave a brief
history of CART. CART was
established in the early ‘80s to relieve parking congestion on campus and was
known at that time as Campus Area Rapid Transit. Over the years, the program received various types of
federal, state and city funding and became Norman’s public transportation system;
the name was changed to the Cleveland Area Rapid Transit. Kris said the buses run six days a
week. In addition to serving the University, they have five city routes, a
metro-lift and a commuter route to Oklahoma City that connects to the OKC
transit center. Kris said all
services are free to faculty, staff and students. Kris said a new service has been added recently. Every Tuesday and Friday, CART services
Lexington, Noble, and Norman and makes a stop at the Social Security
Administration in Moore. This
route is funded by the Department of Rehabilitation Services. If an individual uses the system to travel
to the Social Security Office in Moore, the ride is free. The current
fare is 50 cents for all city routes, metro-lift is $1 and Sooner Express to
OKC is $2.25 each way. Kris said
they would like to see more faculty, staff and their families ride CART. One of the hand-outs contained the route
schedule and the transit guide. CART
can take you to the mall, to the doctor or the store, and if you present your
staff ID, your ride is free.
CHAIR’S COMMUNICATIONS
Betty reported on her
meeting with Vice President for Administrative and Executive Affairs Nick
Hathaway. Healthcare was the main
topic of discussion. Nick told
Betty that the Contribution Strategy and Insurance Option Committee had been
receiving feedback through email messages. Betty asked members to encourage their co-workers to respond
to the committee by email to let them know how staff feels about the healthcare
issues being considered. The email
address is HealthcareOptions@ou.edu.
ACCEPTANCE OF MINUTES OF JUNE
20, 2007
Under Other Communications, Informational Staff
Association, Anna Love asked that the second sentence of that report be changed
to read, “The group held elections to fill remaining vacancies, and they
collected money so they could continue to provide food throughout the summer
from the Angel Food Ministries program to the family they adopted.” Strike throughout the
summer to the family they adopted through the Angel Food Ministries program. On motion by Robert Murphy, the minutes
were then accepted as amended.
OTHER
COMMUNICATIONS
REPORTS
The
following reports were linked to the July agenda:
Staff Senate
Foundation account report.
Minutes of
Employment Benefits Committee meeting of May 17, 2007.
EBC representative Debbie Copp said the committee
did not meet in June, but they met in July and have two meetings scheduled for
August. She said Julius would be
presenting much of what had been covered at their recent meetings later at this
meeting and it would be very informative.
Debbie said it appeared the University would stay with Aetna for health
insurance coverage for another year.
Plans call for a Request for Proposal to be done early next year so
significant changes probably would not take place before January of 2009. The EBC will make a
recommendation to the President by the first week of September and the Regents
will meet on September 11th and 12th and take official
action on the health insurance plans for next year. Debbie added that some people would be very happy to learn
that Aetna is negotiating a contract with McBride Bone and Joint Hospital and
hopes to have a contract signed with them by September.
Report on activities
of Communications Committee by Chair Susan Grossman: Susan
said she had been elected for another term as Chair of the Communications
Committee. This past year, the
committee considered the pros and cons of doing a blog for staff but decided
against it because of monitoring issues.
However, out of that discussion came the idea of doing periodic columns
called “Netiquette,” how to use the web and email efficiently and
politely. Susan said that issue
would continue to be pursued next year.
She said they would also like to promote the use of HUB at hub@ou.edu.
Susan said this was a very useful tool, available for use by students,
staff and faculty. And last, but
not least, she said the committee was still trying to schedule a town hall meeting
with President Boren. They are now
looking at trying to arrange a fall meeting.
Update from Julius
Hilburn on Contribution Strategy and Insurance Option Committee: Julius Hilburn introduced Theta Dempsey and
himself, both members of the Contribution Strategy and Insurance Option
Committee. Julius said the
committee was formed out of a recommendation made by the Employment Benefits
Committee. He said the
committee was made up of 16 people from across the three campuses, all of whom
have experience in healthcare and public policy and use the healthcare system. Julius said some of the issues they are
dealing with are national issues.
He distributed a hand-out to accompany the presentation he gave. The hand-out is available online at http://www.ou.edu/healthcareoptions/
Julius said they were developing
recommendations for the University.
They are looking at broad areas of issues. Early on, the committee developed guiding principles, did a
comparative review of health care programs offered by competitor institutions
and local employers, and looked at the types of incentives that might be
offered to encourage healthier lifestyles, because in the long run that can
influence the cost of healthcare.
Julius said the
information he was sharing was a progress report. The committee has not come to any conclusions and does not
have any final recommendations at this point. They are having discussions and trying to involve the campus
community, letting the campus know of their discussions so they can get
feedback and reactions. That is
important. He said OU’s health
plan should be tested against the guiding principles. They are:
·
OU
wants to be socially responsible with its contribution strategy.
·
OU
wants to address the root cause drivers of health care costs by providing
appropriate support to facilitate healthier behaviors.
·
In
OU’s efforts to attract and retain its required talent and achieve appropriate
employee diversity, its benefit programs need to be affordable to all segments
of OU’s population, so as to be competitive in the marketplace.
·
Retiree
health benefits need to be tied more closely to a total reward strategy, and be
more reflective of the years of service provided to OU.
·
The
health plan should be affordable to all benefit-eligible employees, without
creating a hardship for the lower paid employees.
·
Benefits
should provide reasonably comprehensive security for OU’s employees.
For market benchmarking,
Julius explained that they picked other Big XII institutions, along with a few
other state supported universities in the region that have comprehensive
medical health centers as part of their systems, as well as some private
employers (see the full list in pane 4 in the hand-out). Julius said we wanted to be sure our
plan was similar, but also know how we differed. OU’s current approach is to subsidize medical coverage for
all plans at the single employee PPO (Open Access) plan rate. OU provides a credit to employees when
they choose a lower cost plan. OU
employees pay the full cost of dependent coverage.
Eight of 14 of our peer
institutions charge an employee premium for every plan (e.g., employee only and
employee plus dependents). Three
peer institutions offer plans with free single employee coverage. OSU does it exactly like OU, except OSU
does not pay for dental coverage for their employees, nor do they pay anything
toward retiree benefits. With the
exception of OSU, all peer institutions contribute toward the cost of coverage
for dependents. Julius said they
examined what OU’s spending would look like if our contribution strategy was
the same as the average of these other organizations (see pane 6). The overall costs would remain about
the same, but the University would spend about $5 million less toward employee
premiums, and $4 million more toward contributions for dependent coverage.
Julius drew attention to
the cost of spouse or family coverage.
Under the Open Access PPO, in which 60% of OU employees are enrolled,
the cost for employee and family is $778 per month. The peer institution benchmark is $380 per month (see pane 8
for other comparisons). He said
that rates for single employees had doubled over the past five years, but
family coverage had tripled in that length of time, and that is why so much
attention has been drawn to the issue of what OU’s contributions for dependent
coverage should be. Pane 10
compares benefits offered by OU and the peer institutions. Julius said there were some small
differences, some more generous, some less generous, but nothing to make us
think our benefits were not competitive.
Julius said they had
looked at all of the data and feel there are some issues that need to be
addressed. They are discussing
contribution strategies and trying to come up with a plan that is fair and
responsive to all employees. Under
consideration:
·
Setting
a standard employer/employee contribution cost sharing ratio that is applied
from year-to-year as health care costs change. (Julius said some companies will pay a certain percentage of
the cost of a single coverage and a certain percentage of family coverage and
then on an annual basis, regardless of what the numbers come out, that is what
the organization pays.)
·
Introduction
of a reasonable and affordable employee contribution toward employee-only
health care premiums. (Julius said
he realized people do not want to pay for something they don’t have to pay for
today, but this idea has to be on the table as we look at the overall issues to
sustain the ability to support high-quality healthcare into the future.)
·
Introduction
of a salary based contribution structure.
OU’s lower paid employees would contribute less; higher-paid employees
would contribute more.
·
Redistributing
OU’s health care investment to more competitively position dependent health
care premium contributions.
(Julius said they are hearing more and more that employees can’t afford
to cover their dependents on the OU
plan. Numbers are down 600 to 700
in the last three or four years.)
Julius said the committee
is looking at benefit plan options to determine the appropriate mix of plan
options. Do we need fewer or more
(see pane 12). Some might need
tweaking. Julius said they were aggressively negotiating 2008 costs with Aetna,
based on OU’s 12-month claim history.
They have some preliminary information from Aetna about their rate
proposal for next year and it is in the 9-10% increase range. He said they were negotiating toward a
lower number and tweaking the plan design. He added that OU and its people would benefit by having a
more coordinated approach to wellness and having incentives built into the plan
to encourage lifestyle changes. He
said there were a few things in benefit design that could change soon. As an example, he said we now tell
people to quit smoking, but there are not any smoking cessation benefits in the
plan. Debbie Copp said it came
down to a philosophy issue because there needed to be recognition on campus
that it’s good for everyone to have the same opportunities. She said if you were an hourly person
with only 30 minutes for lunch, it was difficult to take advantage of wellness
opportunities at Goddard in that length of time. She hoped the administration and management would come up
with ways for employees to take advantage of the programs that are available.
Julius encouraged staff
to send in their comments. He said
there was recognition that the University has to put some additional resources
on this issue. He addressed why
dependent coverage has become a big issue. He said if you want to be a preferred employer, your benefit
plan cannot be a barrier to certain people, and the University is getting
feedback that our $800 a month plan is a barrier for a family with kids and a spouse
who doesn’t work at another employer so that they can get insurance
elsewhere.
Betty thanked Julius for
his presentation and asked Theta if she would like to add anything to the
discussion. Theta said she would
like to ensure the group that no decisions have been made. She said the committee agrees on the
six guiding principles and thinks it is important that more attention be paid
to wellness initiatives. The
committee does not want to take any action that will have a significant adverse
impact on lower-paid employees.
Theta questioned how much the dependent premium would have to come down
before it could benefit anyone except the higher-paid employees. She said if it was lowered only a
couple hundred dollars, it would not benefit a lot of people. She said the committee was giving
serious consideration to this type of discussion. She said the committee is struggling with what is
going to be in the best long-term interest of the employee.
Debbie said she thought
it was a tribute to the administration and the committee for their willingness
to share the information upfront as the process is taking place. She reminded
Senate members that it was our responsibility to share the information with
those whom we represent and work with.
Debbie said the information being shared is current information that the
committee and EBC are getting.
A member asked Theta
about the emails the committee had received. Theta responded that basically, the emails covered two
subjects: wellness and that
employees should not have to contribute toward their healthcare premium. Theta said the committee would meet again on July 27. Two more meetings are scheduled after
that, with possibly two more to follow.
Nick gave an update on
other insurance. He said there
would be no increase in long-term disability, none for vision, and probably no
increase in life insurance. He
said they have an opportunity with CNA (long-term care insurance) to have an
open enrollment with a new plan that is a little less expensive than what we
have currently.
NEW BUSINESS
Approval volunteers to
Staff Senate Standing Committees for 2007-2008: A
list of volunteers for Staff Senate standing committees was linked to the July
agenda. Matt Berry moved for
approval of the list of volunteers.
The motion was seconded and passed on a voice vote.
MISCELLANEOUS
Debbie reported that
Campus Campaign was a success this year, with donations and participation
numbers up. She said this showed
that people had a lot of faith in the University because people were willing to
show their support without knowing how the raise situation or healthcare would
turn out.
Barbara Perry presented
Chair Betty Love with a plaque from all of the members of Staff Senate for
leadership as Chair during 2006-2007.
Betty thanked the members for their service on the Senate.
ADJOURNMENT
As there was
no further business, the meeting adjourned at 3:27 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Barbara Perry
Administrative Coordinator
Chris McNabb
Recording Secretary