by Louis Bertini

On July 1, 2002, the Eastern Region pension and welfare plans were merged into the West Coast Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans (MPIPHP). This change will bring major improvements to many of the benefits that Eastern Region participants currently enjoy. The merger could only have been accomplished with the agreement of the bargaining parties to the contracts, as well as with the approval of the trustees of both sets of plans. I have been a trustee of the Eastern Region plans since 1991, so one of the votes of approval was mine.

My fellow Eastern Region trustees and I have worked hard through the years to keep these plans viable. We have faced heavy inflation in the costs of health care, and we had to find ways of restructuring our Welfare Plan (the Local 771 term for "health plan") so that it remained fully comprehensive, but without its cost to contributing employers and self-payers going through the roof. We also faced wildly fluctuating investment markets and had to find ways of keeping the Pension Fund growing with a good rate of return. Our results have been successful. Welfare costs are under control, and members are happy with the coverage they have received. Also, the pension credit rate has grown steadily during recent years, providing higher pensions to those reaching retirement. Considering all this, it's fair to ask why we needed to merge the plans at all.

In fact, there are many factors that make such a merger a great idea. First, in 1998 the members of Locals 771 and 776 voted overwhelmingly to become the national Editors Guild, Local 700. This new Guild would offer its members the right to work in any state, regardless of their residency. But employment contracts were still separated East and West and so were the benefit plans. Eastern Region participants who took a job in the West had to work under the western contracts, which meant that their benefit payments were contributed to the western plans and often did not help them. Now, with a national contract and a national set of plans, members can work anywhere and their benefits will accrue to them properly.

Most important, those in the East will now have a vastly improved retirement package. It is made up of two parts. In addition to the traditional Pension Plan, which is a defined benefit plan, they will now participate in the Individual Account Plan (IAP), which is a defined contribution plan. It functions like an annuity. Weekly contributions are made into each individual participant's account. They are made at the rate of $0.30 per hour worked, plus an additional 4% of the hours worked per week times the scale rate of the worker's classification. This money is invested by the trustees. At the point of retirement the money can be drawn as an annuity or as a lump sum and reinvested as the individual chooses. The combination of these two plans will provide a much higher retirement benefit than could ever have been paid by the old Eastern Pension Plan.

Eastern Region participants can now also qualify for the Retirement Health Plan -- by working 15 qualified pension years (three of which must occur after the age of 40 and one of which must occur after the year 2000) and 20,000 total employment hours. At retirement, participants and their spouses will receive continuous health coverage under the full terms of the retiree health plan for the remainder of their lives.

The fight to bring this deal off was led by Executive Director Ron Kutak and was a long and tough one. It began shortly after the initial Guild merger in 1999. At that time, the contracts on both coasts were up for renegotiation. The first step was to negotiate a national agreement, which would include a plan merger. The producers rejected this out of hand and indicated that they might consider it, but only if we agreed to renegotiate key provisions of the post-production agreement in Los Angeles. This we were absolutely unwilling to do. After many months of tough negotiations, IATSE President Tom Short became directly involved and was able to link our national agreement with some other IATSE negotiations, which helped cement a successful conclusion. I personally thought many times over the last few years that this wasn't going to happen and am now as pleased and surprised as everyone else at the outcome.

It then became the job of the trustees to fit the pieces together. These plans provide benefits in different ways and are funded in different ways. Much analysis, discussion and negotiation took place. The MPIPHP rules will prevail overall. Still, it was my hope to preserve as much as we could of what worked well in the East, and I think we have done so. For instance, the West Coast has many health care facilities and clinics, which the plan uses to serve the Los Angeles community; but none of these exist in the east in the same way. Eastern participants have been using the Oxford Health Plan for a number of years and are very happy with it. We insisted that after the merger, the Oxford Plan would continue to be offered and the MPIPHP has agreed to keep the plan in place through December 31 and will look at the level of service and cost associated with continuing it in 2003 (as they do with all their plans). If Oxford continues to provide a good level of service at reasonable premiums, MPIPHP will continue to contract with them on an annual renewal basis for the tri-state area.

Starting January 1st, the standard West Coast Blue Cross-based plan will be offered as an alternative choice. This is a fee-for-service plan that typically pays 85% of covered physician charges and offers generous hospital, drug and other benefits. It is used by many entertainment unions and most participants view it as a key benefit of union membership (for details see the plan website at www.mpiphp.org). The East Coast dental, optical, and prescription drug providers will change, out of the necessity of conforming to what the MPIPHP is already offering. But the coverage these provide will be similar to what has been previously available in the East. Other provisions will be transitioned out over a period of time. By the time you read this, you should have received written materials by mail from the plan office explaining these changes in detail. Please read them carefully. (Western Region members should note that the plans merger entails no changes for them.)

Other substantive changes have to do with the manner in which a member achieves or maintains participation in the health plan. To receive coverage for a six-month eligibility period, a member must work only 300 hours of covered employment during the appropriate preceding six-month qualifying period. The Eastern Region practice of allowing a person without employer contributions to self pay for the purpose of maintaining coverage will remain in effect for a transition period of three years from July 1, 2002, the date of the plan merger. For the first six months this coverage will be entirely free to qualifying members (those who would have been able to self-pay from July 1 to December 31, 2002) and they will not spend down any credited hours in their health fund bank. In July, 2005, the old rules will be discontinued, and the MPIPHP self-pay rules will apply to everyone. These are standard COBRA provisions allowing for up to 18 months of self-paid coverage.

Overall, though, these changes are small compared to what we are getting in return. Thanks to the work of Ron Kutak and the trustees, the transition to the MPIPHP plans brings a host of significant health and pension benefits to Eastern Region members. The result is that the Editors Guild is now a national organization in every way. What was a disconnected group of editors, mixers, engineers, projectionists and story analysts, is now a powerful, united labor organization, just as we envisioned when we started the merger process three years ago.