Leaders of the unions representing employees of the Times Union met with the company Friday to get a look at health-care options for next year.

The company’s consultants, Rowlands & Barranca, said Blue Shield had first come to the table with a 24 percent increase in costs next year. The brokers and Blue Shield negotiated and brought that increase down to 12.7 percent.

One way that was done to eliminate a small vision benefit the company said only one Guild member used because it was available at a limited number of places. Under the Guild contract, the company provides its own reimbursements for contact lenses and eyeglasses that would be unchanged.

The parties are looking at three different options.

Right now, Guild-covered employees pay 23 percent of health care costs, less than some of the other unions’ members. When the company imposed conditions in 2009, that was the top percentage imposed and it cannot be increased further without agreement.

For members, that cost is now $37.76 a week. To keep the current Blue Sheild plan minus the vision benefit, that cost would rise to $51.71 next year, up $13.94. Under that scenario, the deductible would remain $750.

The second, and least appealing option, was to raise the employee deductible  from $750 to $1,000. That plan would still require employees to pay 10 percent of their medical costs once they acquire $2,000 in medical bills for an individual plan or $4,000 for a family plan. It would still have a cap on employee’s liability once they hit that 90/10 split of $2,000 for an individual plan and $4,000 for a family.

Under that option, the weekly contribution would be $50.45, up $12.69. While that increase is smaller, for most members the higher deductible would make this a more expensive option.

The final option presented also included raising the deductible from $750 to $1,000. Under that choice, however, people’s liabilities would drop to $1,500 for an individual plan and $3,000 for a family plan. The maximum liability under that 90/10 split would similarly drop to $1,500 and $3,000 rather than the current $2,000 and $4,000.

If we go with that option, the weekly contribution would rise to $51.22, up $13.46.

The question the unions need to decide is which option the majority of members would prefer. The Guild thinks there are arguments to be made for the first option — keeping the deductible at $750 — and for the third option, raising the deductible to $1,000 but lowering the total liability.

The company is crunching some numbers for the unions on how many people ended up paying the maximum last year.

The Guild’s Executive Board plans to meet at 12:30 p.m. Monday in the cafeteria to discuss how to proceed. Before any decision is made, we will call a membership meeting so you can talk to us directly.

Hoping to prevent a photographer from being laid off, Guild members approved a buyout offer Thursday.

One employee has already notified the company of an interest in the buyout. The person has a similar number of years of experience, and the cost and benefit to the company would be similar.

The vote was 45-1, with almost all of the ballots understandably being cast by editorial employees.

Interested members have until 5 p.m. Friday to apply at the Human Resources office.

An exempt manager also commented on the Guild’s blog, asking if supervisors were being allowed to apply and expressing a willingness to take in order to save a job.

The union asked Human Resources Director Ruth Fantasia, who said the offer had not been extended to exempt workers but they were welcome to contact her about their interest. The union informed the manager who had inquired about her response.

“While we hate to lose any more employees, the Guild certainly prefers to see people leave voluntarily rather than be forced out,” Guild President Tim O’Brien said. “The photographer who has received notice is a great talent, known for his great care and dedication in producing images for the newspaper. With a new press about to come on line that will allow color on every page, his work would be a great asset to the paper. He has the strong support of his colleagues, who are pulling for him to be able to stay.”

A vote on the buyout offer will be held from 12:45-1:30 p.m. and 5:30-6 p.m. today in the Executive Conference Room upstairs that is outside the publisher’s suite. Members are encouraged to arrive at the start time for a discussion.

The buyout offer is two weeks for every year of service, with a minimum of 5 weeks pay. Those who receive it will be able to collect unemployment. Copies of the buyout offer will be available there.

Last week, the Times Union told two employees they would be laid off in 45 days. One remains on the job while awaiting the result of the buyout, while Editorial Cartoonist John de Rosier took the severance pay and left last week.

“We are holding this session as a meeting at two set times, rather than have people stroll in, vote and leave,” Guild President Tim O’Brien said. “We will still have a ballot box there, but we also want a chance to talk to our members and get their feedback too.”

The Guild reached a tentative agreement with the company on a buyout offer Friday. Under the contract, such offers must be ratified by a vote of the membership.

The Executive Board will meet at 12:30 p.m. Monday in the cafeteria to set the vote. Members are welcome to attend that discussion. We hope to hold the vote by Thursday, and it will be held on the newspaper’s premises. A bulletin will be put out Monday afternoon with details on the vote.

The offer is two weeks for each year of employee service. The company would only agree to a 5-week minimum, far less than what the Guild had sought.

Health care would be for the remainder of the year. The company would not challenge a claim for unemployment.

This week, the company gave two employees nine weeks’ notice of a pending layoff. One, Editorial Cartoonist John De Rosier, chose to accept the layoff.

Under the conditions imposed in 2009 (which can only be changed by mutual consent), the company must offer a buyout before layoffs. Employees will have a short window to consider it, with the deadline set at 5 p.m. Friday, October 19.

The company can choose whether to accept a buyout request.

“We always prefer to see someone leave voluntarily rather than be forced out,” Guild President Tim O’Brien said. “This offer is less generous than past buyouts, however, so we don’t know whether anyone will find it attractive. We set a fast timeline so we don’t leave the remaining person hanging.”

When I was first hired in Albany in 1988, I told my friends the newspaper had its own editorial cartoonist.

I had just left the tiny Jamestown Post-Journal, and I saw that as proof I was now stepping up to a paper of a certain size and level of prestige.

This week, the Times Union has followed in the steps of other newspapers and made the terrible decision to eliminate the position. This year alone, newspapers in Syracuse, St. Louis and New Orleans all have made the same mistake. It’s a trend that has been building steadily over the past few years.

The people who run newspapers often talk about giving their readers something they cannot get anywhere else. A local editorial cartoonist gives readers exactly that.

New York’s infamous Boss Tweed once said of Thomas Nast’s editorial cartoons: ” I don’t care so much what the papers write about me — my constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures.”

That, in essence, is the key to a good editorial cartoon: Not only to speak truth to power, but to do it in as simple a form as possible. As the Times Union’s late cartoonist, Rex Babin, once told me, his best cartoons were the ones that contained no words.

Now newspapers across our country are killing this unique American art form.

Last week, employees at the Times Union were very proud to earn the Newspaper of Distinction Award from the Associated Press. A week later, we are eliminating one of the most distinctive elements of our newspaper. Sure, the space can be filled with syndicated cartoons from one of the few newspapers that still employ a cartoonist, but that means fewer and fewer voices skewering our nation’s politicians — and no one doing so on a local level.

We’ve been blessed over my almost 25 years at the newspaper with three excellent cartoonists: Hy Rosen, Rex Babin and John De Rosier. All had their own unique styles. We lost Hy last year, and Rex died this year of cancer. Now the newspaper is letting John go after 13 years.

I once traveled to an editorial cartoonists’ convention in Memphis with Rex. I often joked that the nation’s great wits were boring as a group because they spent a great deal of time discussing brush widths. That trip made me realize what a lonely profession editorial cartooning is. Sure, a cartoonist can show his or her work to other colleagues, but no one else at the newspaper does what they do. So I forgave them their brush-width fixation, and my admiration for their art grew.

Now many of the people at that convention are out of work. A distinctive art form is being steadily destroyed by people who look purely at revenue. It’s hard to say that an editorial cartoonist generates a certain amount of income for the newspaper, just as it is hard to say how much any single reporter or photographer does. But eliminating the cartoonist sends a message to readers: We are taking away something you value, something that makes your newspaper distinctive, something you cannot get anywhere else. We value your newspaper less, and you should too.

It’s a terrible message, and it comes at a price that may not be immediately apparent but will cost newspapers dearly in the long run.