Employees will pay 43 percent more each week for health insurance next year.

According to numbers given to the Guild Thursday, the weekly cost for the MVP plan will rise about $10 a week. Employees now pay $23.72. The giant leap in health care costs to employees  is largely due to the whopping 5 percent rise in the employee’s share imposed by the Company.

“The insurance brokers, Rowlands and Barranca, did an excellent job keeping the year to year costs of health insurance down,” Guild President Tim O’Brien said. The firm contained the premium increase to 8.9 percent.

Under the contract imposed by the Company, however, employees’ share of health-care costs will increase from 16 percent to 21 percent. Had the employee share stayed the same, our members would be paying only $2 more next year.

“At a time when our members are getting no raise, this is a very difficult hit to take,” O’Brien said. “It is especially upsetting after Publisher George Hearst broke his promise to employees and eliminated the $500 bonus after his contract proposal was defeated. That bonus would not have even covered the increased cost of health care.”

The Company said the health-care share for workers is about $2 less than it was in 2008, but that figure leaves out the fact that employees were not paying a $750 upfront deductible that year. If all used by an employee, that adds $14.43 to the weekly cost.

The deductible will remain at $750 for 2010.

One other worrisome aspect of what MVP had planned has been eliminated for now. The health care firm had said it would force employees who get name-brand drugs when a generic is available to pay both the generic co-pay and the cost difference between the generic and name-brand drugs. That would have cost some employees hundreds of dollars per perscription and potentially thousands of dollars a year.

MVP retreated from that position, and we’re grateful to Rowlands and Barranca for that, although the Guild was told MVP expects to push that issue again in 2011. MVP also retreated on a proposal to increase the co-pay for mail-order drugs.

The Guild is awaiting final confirmation of all the health-care numbers, and it will release a bulletin on this issue early next week.

The New York Post writes that the Hearst Corp. is sitting on a $1 billion war chest. Read it and weep as you pay 5 percent more for your health costs come January 1. (We will meet with the Company at 3:30 p.m. Thursday to discuss health care costs.)

The Guild met Friday with the Company to discuss two issues: the merger of advertising art and marketing operations and the Company’s illegally imposed parking rule changes.

The Guild had questions about the recent merger of the two subdepartments, especially since advertising artists are paid in Class C while marketing media specialists are paid in Class B. The Guild has written a letter which will go out to these workers Wednesday. You can read it here.

As for the parking issue, Publisher George Hearst angrily said the matter is not a mandatory subject of bargaining. If given a proposal by the Guild, he said he’d be under no obligation to consider it or to negotiate. While we had discussed making a proposal, we will not do so unless and until the Company acknowledges it has a legal obligation to negotiate.

It’s not legal, of course, for the Company to impose new rules that could result in your car being towed or you being hit up for a replacement fee without negotiation. We were willing to bargain what should be a simple issue. It’s unfortunate, but the issue will have to go to the National Labor Relations Board.

In the meantime, we recommend putting your tag on the rearview mirror while the case is heard. That does not mean the Guild has agreed to the policy. And if any employee has his or her car towed in the interim, we will argue the Company should pay for it and for any damages to the vehicle.

The Hearst Corp. has proposed a merger of the existing Guild pension fund with another company fund. Union trustees are weighing whether to begin talks about merging the two funds.

On the upside, the merger could potentially strengthen the fund financially and secure benefits for a longer time frame. The downside is that Guild trustees would no longer have any say in how the funds are invested or what benefit changes are made.

The plan’s actuary, who is now independent, says our fund is sound through 2010 but could see a shortfall in 2011 and beyond. What happens is dependent on circumstances that cannot be predicted: how the stock market fares and whether Congress passes legislation, now proposed, that would aid pension funds like ours.

If there was a shortfall and a major contribution increase was needed to sustain the fund, the Company says it would look to layoffs to pay for it. This comes despite the fact that the Company has refused for more than 20 years to increase the contribution despite a steadily shrinking workforce.

The Company also won’t guarantee that it would not lay anyone off even if we merged the plans, which would result in considerable savings for the Hearst Corp.

The Hearst Broadcast Fund that the Company wants our plan to merge with is currently overfunded, but the Company is moving other plans into it in a way that could, over time, sharply diminish its surplus.

Our pension fund was not “a gift” from the Company. The Hearst Corp. was opposed to creating a pension fund, and Guild members went on strike to gain one in 1964. The result was not only a pension plan here in Albany, but other Hearst papers followed suit. Every penny that goes into our fund was diverted from wages.

If the Guild trustees decide to go ahead with negotiations over merging the two plans, a critical element will be language in the merger agreement that keeps our benefits intact for years to come. The Guild trustees are in the midst of getting input from our International and its attorney. We will keep you posted on any developments.

The Guild’s pension trustees are John Runfola, Mark Corelli, Christine Wright and Ken Crowe.

We have lots to talk about at the membership meeting from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday at the Colonie Public Library.

We’ll have nominations to fill a seat on the Executive Board. (If there is one nominee, the person will be elected there. If there is more than one, we’ll have a mail ballot.) We’ll have updates on ongoing discussions over a major change proposed for our pension plan. We’ll discuss the ongoing legal case stemming from our negotiations. We’ll talk about the parking issues and about the merging of the advertising art and marketing departments.

Best of all, we’ll hear from you as to what’s on your mind.

We hope to see you there!