Important information about health benefits and new emergency childcare benefit #
WSNA and other unions representing workers in King County have reached a tentative agreement!
Child Care
This year’s pandemic has created huge challenges for working parents with school-age children who are learning remotely. JLMIC Unions won a $9 million fund to cover childcare expenses for County employees for the 2020 – 2021 school year. These benefits will become available this autumn; we are currently working on the process.
We are looking to the next school year and the uncertainty that lies ahead. It was agreed that any funds that are not spent this school year could be considered for the following school year.
Protecting Health Coverage and Reducing Layoffs
In addition to childcare, JLMIC bargaining also protected employee health coverage with no benefit cuts, and found money to reduce layoffs.
Every two years, the Unions negotiate how much King County contributes toward health care benefits. Any unspent money goes into a Protected Fund Reserve (PFR). Because of successful past negotiations, the PFR has grown to over $75 million by 2020. With those healthy reserves, we temporarily reduced King County’s contributions to health care premiums, saving the County millions of dollars that are dedicated to reducing layoffs. There will be no impact to workers and health coverage will continue as before.
If any layoffs occur, we bargained an agreement that the fund would cover three months of COBRA premiums for the employee.
Questions? Contact your WSNA Nurse Representative — Michelle Moore at mmoore@wsna.org for Staff and Sydne James at sjames@wsna.org for Supervisors.
