The Guild of Pacific Northwest Employees

Since Council 2 recently revived the Dental Trust failure in our minds, please review along with us their 990 IRS tax forms which you can find online by searching for their EIN number which is 91-0985132. If you scroll to the bottom of this post, the tax forms are linked.

Did you know that when we were participants of the “Trust” our members had to spend money to receive the benefit? So, for instance, let’s say that you needed something done and the “Trust” would pay 50% of the cost. You had to pay 50% before the plan would pay its 50%. A number of our members were not using their dental benefit at all because of this fee structure. Over time, the “Trust” got such a bad reputation with payment that some dentists would require their patients to prepay the full amount and then the patient would be required to seek reimbursement from the “Trust.”

The President of the “Trust” which is also ironically the President of Council 2 (and the other officers of the “Trust” are also the other officers of Council 2) did finally come up and meet with the officers of Local 114 to discuss the surveys that we did with our members. We gave them concrete examples of unpaid claims, delayed claims and we even called the “help” line together so Dugovich could feel our members pain when trying to get resolution with the Third party Administrators. Unfortunately, he just didn’t “get it”. His claim to fame is that no one on the board is compensated for their work. First, we don’t believe that. Second, maybe if you appointed actual rank-and-file Union members through out the State who are users of the dental “Trust” it may actually get better Chris. When you have the same bored members (freudian slip) on the “Trust” board year after year, do you really think they care that much about making it better for the members? We don’t, especially if they aren’t compensated. Besides, we all know how difficult it is for you to accurately report your time spent on things.

After a number of warnings to correct the problems which went unheeded, your bargaining team at the time, Kirk Juneau, Shayla Francis, Jael Komac & Karen Powers UNANIMOUSLY decided (after many membership meetings to discuss it) to dump the “Trust” and return to Delta Dental if our members voted for it in the contract package.

After all, to be fair, that’s how we got saddled with the “Trust” in the first place. The bargaining team at the time decided to get rid of Delta and go with the “Trust.” Someone please correct the record if we are wrong on this. But this is what our research shows us. The trustees of our Local right now, jkruse@afscme.org and wblair@afscme.org have all of our files, so they should be able to provide you the particulars if you would like them.

Did you know that the City of Bellingham pays approximately $119 per full time member each month for the life of a contract ($120 x 12months x 3years x 370members) to the “Trust”? I am averaging out the number of members we have to 370 and going with 3 years as the length of a usual contract. Do the math – are you shocked at the number? Providing dental coverage to our group is a big money maker for Council 2. And you thought they only collected dues. 🙂

Some say that because of fear of the dentist, only half of people with dental coverage go to the dentist. What happens to the rest of the money? The “Trust” pockets it of course! They also spend it. On what you say? Well, we don’t know for certain because they won’t give us the audit results despite the law stating that they have to give it to us, as members. However, if you look at the 990 forms that are required by law that they file, you can draw your own conclusions. Check out below what they spent in 2013/4, 2015, 2016 and 2017 on dental Travel and Conferences.

2017
Travel $8,000
Conferences, Conventions & Meetings $12,000

2016
Travel $23,000
Conferences, Conventions & Meetings $17,000

2015
Travel $13,000
Conferences, Conventions & Meetings $24,000

2014
Travel $4,900
Conferences, Conventions & Meetings $12,700