Tackling the Cost of Health Care Benefits: Cinergy and the IBEW

Abstract

Rising health care benefit costs are the leading cost challenge facing employers in the United States, and such costs are likely to remain the most problematic issue in collective bargaining negotiations for the foreseeable future, according to labor and management officials surveyed recently by the Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. 1 In early 2004, Cinergy Corp., an electric and gas utility in Cincinnati, Ohio, and much of Indiana, was confronted with this problem in negotiations with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1347, which represented the electrical workers in Ohio. The company and union chose an innovative approach, and the result benefited everyone involved.