City: Health-Care Deal Won’t Have to Include Employee Contributions

An introductory discussion on health-care savings between municipal-union leaders and Mayor de Blasio’s chief negotiator March 11 produced two significant ground rules: labor’s insistence that unions that Mayor Michael Bloomberg had refused to give two 4-percent raises that the rest of the workforce received be “made whole,” and the city’s indication that having workers pay a portion of their health-benefit premiums was not a priority if significant savings could be found elsewhere.

The bad taste left by the former Mayor’s labor policies during his final term in office was reflected in the first comment Municipal Labor Committee chairman Harry Nespoli made to a reporter following the hour-long meeting that included dozens of union officials and Labor Commissioner Robert W. Linn and his aides.