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By Lookout Staff

November 1, 2011 -- Santa Monica College's classified employees union followed the lead of managers and trustees and voted to ratify a new collective bargaining agreement that will save the school more than a million dollars.

The savings allowed SMC to add more than 200 new classes.

The agreement approved last month aligns the health care program for classified employees with the one previously adopted for SMC managers and trustees, reducing health care premium costs by $1,097,365 in 2012, college officials said.

The college’s managers and trustees had switched over to the new program this summer, reducing health premiums by an estimated $790,000 for the two years combined.

“Rising benefit costs are increasingly a problem for institutions like SMC,” said Marcia Wade, SMC’s Vice President of Human Resources.

The agreements came after benefits nearly doubled in ten years from 12.5 percent of the college’s general fund in 2002 to 20.7 percent in 2011.

In June, CalPERS, the college’s health care provider, announced that premiums for PERS Care, the most expensive health plan offered by SMC, will increase 15.14 in 2012, one of the largest increases ever.

Negotiations are ongoing between the college and the faculty collective bargaining unit to secure a similar agreement on benefits to take effect in 2013.

Under the new health programs, workers will pay a slightly higher cost out of pocket but will retain the same coverage. The college will help workers transition to the new plan by providing each classified employee with a one-time Health Reimbursement Account, or HRA.

“With health expenses reduced, the college has restored class sections,” said SMC President Chui L. Tsang, “with more than 200 new classes added by the college in the past few weeks.”

Statewide, enrollments in the more expensive PERS Care health plan have been in a decade-long decline, dropping from 14,682 active enrollments in 2002 to only 6,229 in 2010. The Los Angeles Community College District, with 3,458 full-time employees, switched over to the less expensive program in 2009.