Nearly a month has passed since OCOPE and the College last sat down to bargain over a new union contract, and no date has been set to resume bargaining during the stymied negotiations.

The union rebuked a “final offer” by the College after weeks of contract negotiations in August, with the union membership unanimously declining to vote on an “incomplete” contract on Aug. 10.

In a letter circulated on Aug. 26, union officials criticized the College for “refusing to be held to what they negotiate” and “shifting the burden of healthcare costs to the workers.”

Vice President of College Relations Al Moran said that the College and union worked extensively on the healthcare plan before the College made its “final offer.”

“Both sides worked extremely hard to tailor the healthcare plan to families and keep it affordable,” he said.

The union contends that the College is using mandates by the Board of Trustees to justify rigid positions on healthcare, hiding the justification for College cost projections of union benefits and withholding figures proving the necessity of further union concessions.

“We’ve never gone on strike. We don’t want to go on strike, but we’ve never been in this position before,” Diane Lee, president of OCOPE, said. The union represents 187 campus workers as Local 502 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union.

The union is upset about the new healthcare plan that could cost some members in excess of $3,000 extra per year, according to union projections. An OCOPE employee with a family currently pays 1.5 percent of their earnings towards healthcare but would pay two percent in the first year of the contract, a 25 percent increase, according to contract figures on the union’s website.

Lee said that the union met with two consultants — Mercer Consulting and Group Healthcare Associates — in the beginning of July to tackle a Board of Trustees mandate to bring healthcare costs down to $1.5 million in 2005.

The union shaved more than $300,000 and believed it had whittled costs down to the College’s threshold, Lee said. But then the College announced a second round of cost-cutting measures: healthcare would no longer be provided to spouses eligible for other workplace insurance and employees would be responsible for 10 percent of all medical expenses, she said.

“We were very disappointed,” Lee said. “We thought we had reached the finish line, but they moved back the start.”

The College points out that several rounds of revisions were made to the healthcare proposal during the negotiations with the consultants.

Lee said that the union’s healthcare proposals were “rejected.” She believes the College negotiators, led by the College’s law firm, Frantz Ward, used Board of Trustee mandates to skirt around making concessions in healthcare for members.

The College denies that the Board mandated the spousal clause or any specifics of the new healthcare plan, saying that the College executive body “does not operate on this level of negotiations” but only in “broader budgetary negotiations.”

In regard to the spousal clause, Moran said: “The College has made a commitment to stop subsidizing external health plans.”

The contract would also require OCOPE members to pay for 10 percent of their medical costs — as well as co-pays and other charges — that were fully covered by insurance in the past, Lee said.

Last year, the College announced a five percent decrease in the amount its insurance would cover for faculty medical costs, according to news accounts.

Due to the College’s concern about skyrocketing medical costs, the union wants to add a clause guaranteeing that healthcare costs and coverage would not change over the length of the contract.

Moran said that the College would not use Article 13, which allows the College to change healthcare terms if the medical network or insurance carrier changes, as a means to increase union healthcare costs.

“There is concern that the College will use Article 13 as an escape clause,” Moran said. But he said that wouldn’t happen without the College consulting with the union beforehand.

The union also asserts that the College’s proposed two percent wage increase next year and three percent in 2005 and 2006 is not enough to cover increases in healthcare and the cost of living, including the price tag of putting members’ children through college.

Oberlin provides financial assistance to its employees to help offset their children’s college costs, a benefit called tuition remission. Most campus employees receive at least 50 percent tuition remission; OCOPE employees receive only 20 percent. The College refuses to entertain raising tuition remission for OCOPE members, union officials said. The College maintains there is not enough money with other benefits that the union seeks.

The union is frustrated that the College has not been transparent in showing the need for union concessions. The College has provided only vague data to prove the union’s demands would cause cost overruns, said Tracy Tucker, first vice president of OCOPE.

Lee suggested that the College offered monetary bonuses to UAW employees to entice them into voting for an inferior contract on Tuesday.

“It appears the College was trying to bribe the UAW members into taking the proposal,” she said. A ratified UAW proposal could possibly hurt OCOPE’s leverage with the College.

Moran denied the bribing charge, saying, “the UAW is one of the most widely-respected unions in the United States. The College isn’t going to be able to bribe the UAW to do anything.”

The union’s next regularly scheduled meeting is on Sept. 14, at which point a contract vote may be taken, Lee said.