System Council U

Negotiations resume after the Hurricanes

We would like to thank everyone for working the long hours in a safe manner during the hurricanes. Once again you have demonstrated the utmost in professionalism, determination and pride in performing your job even if you were personally affected by the hurricanes. Hopefully by now your lives are getting back to normal as we all struggle to rebuild and continue on with life. During the three back to back hurricanes, negotiations were halted due to members of the committee working in the field, lack of power and water damage at the Council Office which is in the process of being repaired.

The Committees are now back in full negotiations on a regular basis and are meeting at least three to four days a week at this time. We spent time the first week reviewing where we had left off and began coming back up to speed after the long break. Over the last two weeks we have continued to discuss the same proposals for Power Systems, Power Generation, Nuclear Business Units and the Master section of the contract as previously communicated in earlier bulletins. We also discussed an additional option for the medical plan known as Open Access Point of Service Plan (OAPOS) which is plan designed to blend portions of the PPO and POS plans. Our Actuary has been reviewing the new plan and performing cost analysis for the Union and once complete we will continue discussions on the Medical Plan.

During the past week we presented the benefit portion of the Unions proposal package which includes:

Proposal	Description
Thrift	Make overtime thrift-able
	When an employee reaches the IRS maximum for pretax contributions develop an automatic plan feature that allows contributions to go from pretax to after tax
	Increase the company’s 100% match from 3% to 5%
	Increase the company’s 50% match from 4-6% to 6-7%
	Business Manager and staff participate in pretax option of thrift
	Employees defer up to 50% of pay in thrift plan
	Decrease the age requirements to sell company stock matching funds (Golden age transfer)
Pension	Interest credit rate tied to yield/earnings of Fund with a 6% bottom cap
	Additional 1 % interest credit negotiated in 2000 contract continue through 2004 contract
	Increase Basic Pension Credit from 6% to 10%
	Pension-able earnings include to OT, shift & premium pay.
	Lump sum of $7000 to pension for all employees for every year employed
Medical	System Council Negotiating Committee involved in selection of all medical, dental, optical providers
	System Council administrator to review plan performance and have direct access to medical/dental/optical providers
	Increase refractive eye surgery to $800
Dependent Coverage	Include significant Other
Retiree medical and Dental insurance	Upon retirement all employees have option of the Bargaining Unit or Retiree medical plans
	Upon retirement the employee have the option to enroll in the Bargaining Unit dental plan
	All employees have choice of social security supplement ($8,216 per year) or the active or retiree medical plan
	Retirement age 50 with retiree medical.
	Increase the Social Security supplement from $8216 to $15,000
	Social Security supplement indexed to CPI annually
Retiree Medical Premium Caps	Increase the caps for premiums for retiree medical by 50%
Retiree Medical Premiums	Lower the rule of 90 to the rule of 80 to obtain full medical coverage upon retirement
Longevity Compensa-tion Pension benefit	Addition of 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% of employee’s pension account based on years of service to pension account.
Drop Plan	Presented an additional retirement plan that would enhance and employee’s retirement benefit and provide a date certain for retirement.

This week, we will continue the above discussions and will resume with the weekly Bulletins.