August 6, 2007

Alan C. Abramowitz, Director
County of Essex
Office of Human Resourcesv
Hall of Records, Room 340
Newark , NJ , 07102

Grievance Rejoinder

Dear Mr. Abramowitz:

CWA Local 1081 thanks you for your attached rejoinder of August 1, 2007 to our Union's attached Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance of July 31, 2007, entitled "Wellness Courses". While our Union has always held you in high esteem based upon your excellent work acumen and your constant cooperation regarding issues impacting our members, we must respectfully disagree with nearly all of your conclusions contained within your letter written us:

  1. While our Union will take you for your good word when you maintain that our grievance's assertion that "the County of Essex and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield have concocted this Wellness Courses process and distributed its documentation" is incorrect, the fact that our cited member received the letter from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield announcing its Horizon Health and Welfare Education Program at the same time as your attached memorandum of July 18, 2007 entitled "Needs Assessment-Wellness Courses" appeared to us as more than coincidental, especially since Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield is a major health benefits vendor under contract with the County of Essex serving many of our members.
  2. Had the County of Essex held a Labor/Management Roundtable meeting to discuss its Wellness Courses and the need for the Needs Assessment, as it does every year when it changes health benefits vendors inviting all of the Unions representing County employees to explain the County's reasoning, the confusion and apparent confluence and connectivity between the County's Wellness Courses and the Horizon Health and Welfare Education Program could have been obviated.
  3. While CWA Local 1081 is pleased to learn that "the Horizon Health and Welfare Education Program has nothing to do with the County of Essex or the Needs Assessment that was mailed out on July 18, 2007", we can't help but wonder if the County had been aware of the Horizon program either through communiqué from the company or through information provided the County by affected County employees. If the County had been aware of the Horizon program, why did the former apparently not inform the latter of the County's program in order to avoid the confusion and consternation expressed by our cited member? If the County had not been aware of the Horizon program, why would the company not inform the County of its plan and attempt to enlist the support of the County to encourage its affected employees to participate?
  4. The intent of our grievance was not "to suggest that all County employees remain uninformed because one employee took exception to a letter they received which recommended they would benefit from a specific educational program" What concerned our cited member, and his Union , was the fact that his specific medical malady was identified within the Horizon letter. While his malady happens to be diabetes, one that normally does not carry any sociological stigma, what if his condition were HIV/AIDS and that had been cited within the Horizon letter and that letter had been opened by someone either than he, either mistakenly or purposely? Since the County has a contract with Horizon to coordinate health benefits provision for our cited member and many other of our members and other County employees, the County has a responsibility to dissuade Horizon from stating the employees' maladies within a letter with information culled from the company's "review of claims information, health risk assessment submissions, physician or self-referral and/or other Horizon BCBS medical management programs". Horizon could just as effectively invited our cited member to take part in its program without memorializing within its letter mailed him his particular medical malady.
  5. While you ask our Union within your missive, "Would you also have Horizon stop issuing OBGYN annual reminders or wellness visits to its members?", CWA Local 1081 inquires of you if the company also routinely reminds its affected members of their HIV/AIDS and/or STD'S and/or Hepatitis treatments? If so, our Union maintains our opposition to the company memorializing such personal information and transmitting it through the U.S. mail.
  6. While we are pleased to learn from your letter written us that "The completion of the Needs Assessment form is voluntary, as is attendance at these classes", might not it have been more appropriate and constructive for you to have stated those facts within your memorandum of July 18, 2007, addressed to "All Department Directors Statutory and Constitutional Officers", wherein you ask them to have their "personnel Liaison copy and distribute this form to all employees within your Department, and collect them when complete"?
  7. As CWA Local 1081 asserted within our abovementioned Step II Class Action Contractual Grievance in this regard, "our Union appreciates and supports the apparent sentiments that precipitated the plan to offer these courses", which should have answered your concern contained within your letter written us that you would hope our Union "would support this program for the intent that it was created, the benefit of County employees". In fact, we respectfully remind you that within our grievance we noted that "If you will please recall, CWA Local 1081 and the then Executive Director of the Newark YMCA met with the County's Risk Manager and the County Executive's Chief of Staff to discuss such a wellness program with discounts offered to County employees choosing to join any one of the three YMCA's located within urban Essex County. Unfortunately, the County did not follow up on its promised part in exploring the feasibility and desirability of the YMCA/CWA Local 1081 proposal". CWA Local 1081 not only fully supports the County of Essex's Wellness Courses, but we continue to offer to work with the County to develop a cooperative relationship with the Newark YMCA described above especially since I have long served on the board of trustees of that esteemed organization and I am well versed in its quality programming.

As has always been the case, and as it always shall, I have found any opportunity to meet with you a distinct pleasure fraught with fruitfulness. I therefore too "would welcome the opportunity to discuss the Wellness Courses with you". However, CWA Local 1081 must reiterate our sincere suggestion the County arrange a Labor/Management Roundtable meeting so as to inform of all of the Unions representing County employees of the Wellness Courses and enlist their support as well.

Yours truly,

David H. Weiner, President
CWA Local 1081




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