Maintaining free family healthcare
Industry Wide Agreement Contract Summary | July 1, 2026 – June 30, 2034
Maintaining free family healthcare benefits was a defining issue in the negotiations.
Last year, healthcare costs across the country skyrocketed. At the close of 2025, our Health Benefits Fund reported significant and unexpected increases to healthcare costs – and under the existing contribution rate, it would have created a shortfall of over $60 million.
In a non-union workplace, the employer would undoubtedly cut benefits or pass these rising costs on to their workers.
Our union made it clear that we would not accept any givebacks, out-of-pocket contributions from our members, or reduction of benefits.
Under the new contract, employers must increase their contributions to the Health Benefits Fund by 3 percentage points, from 27.25% to 30.25% of payroll. To further bolster the Health Benefits Fund, we agreed to temporarily redirect future contributions from the overfunded Pre-Paid Legal Fund. The diversion will have no impact on Pre-Paid Legal benefits and will bring the total employer contribution to the Health Benefits Fund to 30.50% for a period of time. Each percentage point is valued at over $20 million, bringing the total value of this increase to about $65 million per year.
In the event of another catastrophic spike in healthcare expenses, the industry must increase their contributions to the Health Benefits Fund by yet another 3 percentage points. After that, if even more money is needed, the contract will temporarily divert contributions from other benefit funds to the Health Benefits Fund as long as the diversion will not affect your benefits in any way.
The employer must pick up the full cost of your healthcare for the life of the contract, without any impact on your benefits.
At the end of the day, despite all of these challenges, the new contract secures your healthcare and makes the employers responsible for paying any increased cost to keep your current benefits for the life of our contract.
In addition, under the new contract, the HRA benefit and reimbursement for orthodontics will begin increasing each year of the contract by the percentage increase to wage related items.
