Thursday, May 29, 2014

Domestic partner benefits

On another post Anonymous wrote:

"New Post on Expenditures please

Now that DOMA is behind us in PA, is it now the time to get rid of domestic partner benefits for pps employees? Since same sex couples can now get married in PA, let em. Why should taxpayers be paying for benefits for unmarried couples. (This includes opposite sex couples too) While I hate to be the one to endorse anyone loosing coverage, we must consider the taxpayers wallets.
And while we are cutting costs. (Just dreaming) The board needs to dissolve the relationship with the PFT as it is now. All officers should go back to the classroom and represent the membership as time allows before or after work hours. If the Clerical-Technical, Custodial, and maintenance units can do it, so can the teachers. PFT has already proved officers do not need to be in the office. Look for Dale Moss' office or Ed McManus' office. They have none. Nina decided they were not needed as full time staff. How much money would be saved here?
This would also lead to a stronger union. If nina had to put up with a bad principal or teaching environment, action would happen. Put them back where they belong! The board should be voting on this continued memorandum of misunderstanding."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The DOMA issue is bigger than this "little engine that could" blog about local education should handle.

Questioner said...

"Defense of marriage" is beyond the scope but the level of employee benefits is not.

Anonymous said...

As a gay teacher who uses these benefits, I'm okay with losing DP benefits. We fought for them because at the time same-sex marriage was not legal -- that's why PPS only has same-sex DP benefits but not for heterosexual couples.

That said, let's be reasonable about the timeframe. Give folks a time to arrange to get married. Maybe just take them out of the next contract.

And to be clear, you're not paying extra in taxes having my partner on our benefits plan. He'll be there once we get married. But I've been paying extra taxes for this whole time -- thousands of dollars extra -- because his benefit it viewed by the federal govt as income for me.