Union: UB cuts insurance for furloughed staff
In the midst of a pandemic, the University of Bridgeport has cut off health care benefits to at least 10 furloughed employees, the union representing them has charged.
Seth Goldstein, representing Local 153 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, called the action outrageous and said it extends to non- union workers beyond the ones he represents.
Goldstein said the union will file a contract grievance and National Labor Relations Board complaint.
“This is not the university I have dealt with over the last 14 years,” Goldstein said in a telephone interview.
When UB, like college campuses across the state and country, closed in mid- April and it became apparent they would not reopen any time soon, dozens of workers were furloughed or laid off.
UB officials in an email said they are following the current collective bargaining agreement with the local.
“We continue to value and are grateful for our union employees and their service to the University and realize that these are unprecedented times,” said Susan Andrews, a university spokeswoman.
In an email to Goldstein, Melitha Przygoda, director of human resources at UB, said the university policy was to cancel health insurance for all employees at the end of the month that they were no longer actively employed. In this case, insurance was carried through April 30.
“The university is unable to comply with the demand for the continuation of health insurance” beyond that date, Pryzgoda wrote.
She said any request to continue health insurance coverage would be forwarded to the university’s general counsel and the vice president for finance.
Pryzgoda also said the university categorically denies it violated National Labor Relations Act rules.
“It’s not okay,” said one of the effected employees who asked that she not be named. “Not having ( health insurance) suddenly is a little frightening, to be completely honest. It’s stressful in midst of a pandemic like this. You don’t know how sick you will get or what you will need.”
The employee, who said her furlough came as a surprise, is now collecting unemployment and has switched to a HUSKY plan that she described as not as good as the insurance UB had provided.
Goldstein called it “cruel” to refuse to extend health insurance to employees the university intends to rehire. UB is receiving millions of dollars in federal aid through the CARES Act that, the union said, ought to go to maintain the health insurance benefit.
Other universities he deals with, including Wesleyan and Fairleigh Dickinson, have not cut health benefits for staff, Goldstein added.
“Our members have worked diligently for the university; it would be unconscionable to place them in a untenable situation of being stripped of medical insurance during the most deadly pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu,” Goldstein said.