Employee Benefits

Jennifer and Greg Danylyshyn of Pasadena are conscientious parents. They keep proper car seats in their used BMW, organic vegetables in the family diet and the pediatrician's number by the phone. They don't have access to the group medical insurance offered by many employers. She's a stay-at-home mom. He's a self-employed music supervisor in the TV and film industry. So they buy individual policies for each family member.

General Motors Corp. is suspending a variety of benefit programs for its white-collar workers and slashing additional jobs to cut costs -- a move that comes as employers nationwide begin to review the cost of retirement and healthcare packages in an effort to ride out the economic downturn. Cash-strapped GM, the largest of the Big Three Detroit automakers, plans to stop matching its nonunion employees' contributions to their 401(k) retirement savings plans beginning Nov.

Orange County's Measure J may be the closest thing to a sure bet on next month's ballot. Voters appear to so strongly favor the idea of requiring their approval of any future increases in county employees' pensions that unions for government workers aren't even campaigning against it. The bigger question is whether Measure J will make much of a difference in pension costs.

Employers are dramatically shifting healthcare costs onto workers, so much so that the average annual deductible for an individual surpassed $1,000 for the first time this year, according to a new study. Millions of workers -- whether employed by small, medium or large companies -- must now pay an average of $1,001 out of their own pockets before their health insurance coverage begins paying a share of the expenses. That's up 17% from $859 last year.

It seems clear that change is coming to the U.S. healthcare system. President-elect Barack Obama wants it. Congress wants it. Even the insurance industry says the time is ripe to do things differently. But not too differently. The idea of doing away with the employer-based insurance system -- which has become increasingly unsustainable for businesses and has resulted in 47 million Americans going without coverage -- seems to be off the table.

A federal law intended to allow companies to create a uniform system of health benefits across the country may stand in the way of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's still-sketchy universal health plan. The 1974 law sought to help employers avoid a spate of conflicting state laws -- with different levels and types of worker benefits. Last week a federal appeals court cited the law when it invalidated a Maryland law aimed at making Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spend more on healthcare.

The big supermarket chains and union officials have started talks on a new labor contract. If those early contacts have been the appetizers, the players will sit down to the main course Monday, when Southern California's biggest grocery union local meets with Ralphs Grocery Co. Healthcare benefits will be the central issue, just as they were in late 2003, when contract talks disintegrated into a 4 1/2 -month strike and lockout.

John Maddox says he knows how to motivate his 150 employees. Paid sick leave is one of the perks he offers to the 13 managers who run his six franchised Modesto-area pizza restaurants -- rewarding them for proving themselves responsible and ambitious. But if legislation now before Congress passes, Maddox will have to extend the benefit to nearly all of his workers at Mountain Mike's Pizza -- some of whom, he says, miss work too often.

In 1961, Sam Jordan had just finished a six-year stint flying helicopters in the Marine Corps when he saw a want ad for an upstart airline called Air America. "They said they wanted pilots," he recalled. "They didn't say anything about where the flying would be." Within months, Jordan was flying helicopters in Laos, carrying medical equipment and other supplies to refugees in remote mountain villages.

Negotiations on a new labor contract for Southern California supermarket workers, abruptly halted Tuesday, are expected to resume next week amid a dispute over health benefits. "We want to get back to the table," said Rick Icaza, president of United Food and Commercial Workers union Local 770 in Los Angeles.