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Posts Tagged ‘UPS’
August 21st, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Spouses Losing Doctors & Insurance under ObamaCare

News broke today that the United Parcel Service (UPS) is dropping an estimated 15,000 spouses of its non-union employees from the company’s health insurance plan – largely because of ObamaCare.

Doing so will save UPS around $60 million a year.

Under the health law, working spouses who have access to medical insurance from another employer don’t have to be covered.

The UPS memo explaining the decision cites ObamaCare’s stepped-up coverage requirements as playing a big role, reports Kaiser Health News.

Costly benefits such as the law’s “ban on annual and lifetime coverage limits and its requirement to cover dependent children up to age 26” will raise the cost of premiums for employers.

Eliminating coverage for working spouses is one of the few ways companies can rein in costs while still complying with the law.

But along with losing access to their current doctor networks and benefits, UPS’s soon-to-be-severed working spouses will also likely pay more for health insurance.

“The $500 in-network family deductible for UPS’s basic plan, for example, is less than the nationwide average of $733,” says Kaiser.

Remember that oft-repeated line from President Barack Obama in 2009 that if you like your current doctor and insurance plan you will be able to keep them after ObamaCare goes into effect in 2014?

Fast forward to today, and reality is singing a very different tune.

April 28th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
…And Speaking of Big Labor, WaPo’s Harold Myerson Does Some Water-Carrying
Posted by Print

Why is it that defenders of the Big Labor agenda never seem to engage in honest, straightforward, factual debate?

Washington Post columnist Harold Myerson provides the latest illustration in his commentary today.  Myerson carries Big Labor’s water by arguing that FedEx, which is a longtime target of Big Labor’s ire due to its failure to capitulate to union campaigns, should be regulated in the same way as more heavily-unionized UPS.  UPS falls under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), whereas FedEx falls under the Railway Labor Act (RLA).

And for very good reason.

Approximately 85% of FedEx parcels are shipped by air, whereas UPS delivers 85% of its packages locally via truck.   That makes FedEx subject to the RLA, and UPS to the NLRA, which Congress specifically determined.  But Myerson, unsurprisingly, avoids mentioning this critical distinction in his column.  As one predictable consequence of UPS’s NLRA classification, it was brutalized by a costly 1997 strike.  So now, UPS, Congressional liberals and Big Labor seek to cripple FedEx by shoehorning it into the same classification as UPS.

UPS seems to follow the adage “if you can’t beat ’em, unionize ’em,” but it would be nice if Big Labor and its apologists could at least argue honestly once in a while.