What Happens if They Strike? Part II (Updated)

Yesterday Bongo showed what would happen with teachers’ salaries in the event of a strike. Today, Bongo will explain the other part of a walk-out that will really “strike” at the heart of teachers’ wallets… loss of benefits.

What happens to medical and dental benefits in the event of a strike? In short, there aren’t any, and teachers must sign up for Cobra and pay 100% of the cost of the premiums during the strike. Here’s how it works in D 158:

According to the current contract (this information can be found on page 7), the District pays the following toward insurance premiums for teachers:

Single Coverage: $462 per month
Single Coverage +1: $550 per month
Family Coverage: $612 per month

Keep in mind; the numbers above represent only a percentage of a teacher’s monthly insurance cost. The actual premiums per teacher are much higher.

If you humans look at the bills paid in any month in D 158, you can see that insurance premiums are paid on behalf of the employees twice each month and the industry standard is that each payment would provide coverage for the two following weeks. So depending on the day teachers would decide to strike, they would have anywhere from 1-14 days of leftover coverage before they were uninsured.

Once employees are without insurance, they have a window of time, usually 60 days, to elect Cobra coverage. While Bongo initially believed teachers would have to sign up for Cobra coverage before the current coverage expired, it appears that teachers might actually be able to take a 'wait and see' stance on electing the coverage. However, if coverage is elected, payments would be retroactive for the entire period, as would the coverage. The research Bongo has done into Cobra is not clear on how Cobra relates to public sector employees who go on strike. It's possible the rules are different for employees who aren't fired or laid off, but rather walk off the job themselves. You can read about Cobra coverage here.

In the event of a really long strike, any teacher who did not sign up during the designated window would be completely out of luck and they would be on their own to find medical coverage for the duration of the strike.

Teachers, have you asked these specific questions of your leadership? Bongo is guessing “no,” because when Bongo talks to teachers, they seem to have no idea that a strike would pose a serious financial hardship on them. They all are just saying that they have been told they won’t lose money because they can get loans equal to the amount of their pay.

Ask the questions, teachers. You need to understand the full consequences of that strike vote you took a few weeks ago. Wouldn’t it have been nice if your leaders would have explained it all to you ahead of time? But then again, the results of the strike vote might have been much different if they had…