LV Culinary Union eases rules for health insurance eligibility

David Strow

Thursday, Dec. 23, 1999 | 11:20 a.m.

The Culinary Union is loosening new eligibility standards that in their initial restrictive form could have cost many part-time hotel-casino workers their health insurance coverage.

The controversial changes, announced this summer, increased the number of hours Culinary members had to work to become eligible for "self-pay" insurance to 800 hours a year, up from one hour a year. The union said the move was necessary to protect the health care fund from abuse.

The move was met with sharp criticism from some part-time members, who would have lost their health coverage under the new requirement.

As a result, the trustees of the union's health and welfare fund voted unanimously this month to lower the requirement to 224 hours a year. In terms of an average workweek, that lowers the bar from an average of more than 15 hours a week to less than 5 hours per week.

Jim Arnold, secretary-treasurer of the 45,000-member Culinary Local 226 in Las Vegas, said he pushed for the changes after learning of the impact the new hourly requirements would have on some union members.

"It (224 hours) was a good number that protected the majority," Arnold said. "There's no magic to it, but it would protect those that tried to work. If they get 200 hours (a year) in, it means they're trying."

By contrast, Arnold said some people are working in non-union jobs -- many times, even outside of Nevada -- and worked a single hour a year in a union job to maintain health coverage.

"There are a lot of people taking advantage of an excellent health and welfare plan that shouldn't have been, and that sort of thing drains any sort of fund," Arnold said. "It would be ridiculous for our members to take a cut in benefits to help people that don't even work in Culinary jobs."

The changes will go into effect on Jan. 1, but will not have any impact until March 2001. They will only affect Culinary Union members in Las Vegas, the union's largest market.

Culinary members that work full-time are automatically covered by the union's insurance at no out-of-pocket cost. But former full-time workers can maintain coverage by using self-pay -- that is, paying the insurance premium normally paid by an employer. The average cost of this premium is about $200 a month.

The hourly requirement is the number of hours a year a Culinary member must work in one year at a union job in order to be eligible to self-pay in the next year.

How many employees would have lost their insurance through the 800-hour rule is in dispute. Critics have claimed the number exceeds 8,000, while Arnold said it was only about 900. Most of the affected employees work in banquet departments, Arnold said, and could not get assigned for 800 hours of work a year.

These changes will allow the vast majority of the affected workers to keep their insurance, he said. Arnold was unable to identify how many workers will lose their eligibility under the 224-hour rule.

Union members who retire at age 62 will be able to keep their insurance until they become eligible for Medicare at age 65, he said.

"This will protect the people who are trying to work and need this coverage, yet it will remedy the problem of our insurance being drained," Arnold said.

The move appears to have appeased some part-time workers who complained to the union following the original announcement.

"It's a fair number, and I thank God they did it," said Helen Schamy, one of the most prominent critics of the new requirements. "That will do away with any free-riding people."

But Schamy also criticized the union for hiking the hourly requirement to such a high level in the first place.

"They didn't do their homework before it was done and didn't think about the people they were putting out on the street without insurance," Schamy said.

Arnold acknowledged the bar was probably set too high at first.

"In the 1980s, our fund went totally broke," Arnold said. "As long as I'm here, I don't want to see that happen. The hours may have been a little wrong, but it was a measure designed to protect our fund."