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Union cries foul after Palatine school district cuts benefits to striking workers

Health benefits for some of the striking workers at Palatine School District 15 have been cut, prompting charges of bully tactics from the employees’ union, which claims they should receive health insurance through the end of the month.

But district officials said they clearly warned the employees that a strike would result in loss of pay and benefits. The district said that warning came more than a week before about 450 support staff walked off the job Monday.

Contract negotiations are expected to resume Sunday morning. But on Thursday, the representatives for the Education Support Personnel Association, which represents district support staff, including nurses and aides, cried foul after they began receiving reports from their members that they no longer had health insurance.

Union officials say members have already contributed their portion of their health care for October and should have remained covered.

“They (collectively) spend $40,848 for insurance every two weeks,” said Bridget Shanahan, a spokeswoman for the union’s parent group, the Illinois Education Association. “That money was stolen from our members. It’s extremely disheartening, it’s cruel, it’s dangerous and it’s bullying.”

But the district said the union misinformed workers about how their insurance program works, and said it clearly communicated in a letter sent before the strike vote that such a move could lead to loss of pay and benefits.

“The district told the ESPA members that this would happen if they chose to participate in the strike,” District 15 spokeswoman Morgan Delack said. “We made sure they were aware of this. We are very sorry for any issues that may have come up because of lack of information, but we did everything we could to relay the facts to the members.”

Delack said the district’s insurance contracts and policies require that employees work a certain number of hours to be eligible for coverage, and that “those who went on strike no longer meet those eligibility requirements.”

Included among those who lost their insurance coverage were 168 workers — including school nurses and others who provide care to students with significant mental, physical and medical needs — who were ordered to return to work Tuesday after a Cook County judge issued a temporary restraining order, deeming their work vital for those students’ safety. The union said it intends to fight the order, and a court hearing is slated for Monday.

The district said that it is in the process of reinstating insurance coverage for the employees who were ordered back to work by the court, Delack said.

But Jacqui Downing, 49, said she learned her coverage was gone when she went to fill a prescription Thursday and found that she was no longer insured.

“I started crying,” Downing said. Her son, who has cerebral palsy, requires expensive physical therapy twice a week to help him maintain mobility, and Downing said she feared she would no longer be able to afford it. “I mean, I started thinking, my youngest has therapy this afternoon. What do I do, do I cancel it?”

She said she called the district and learned that as one of the 168 employees ordered back to work, her insurance was being reinstated.

In a letter to union officials, an attorney for the district explained that the district was legally obligated to report the striking workers names to their insurance provider, though Delack did not explain how the district is legally required to do so.

Shanahan said the district’s policy to immediately terminate the health benefits of striking workers is a rule the district made on its own and could have chosen to rescind.

mwalberg@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @mattwalberg1

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