Starting Jan. 1, retired College employees will no longer receive a previously guaranteed $5,000 death benefit, College President Jim Yong Kim said in an interview with The Dartmouth. This comes after the Service Employees International Union Local 560 signed a new two-year contract with the College in August that reduced health care benefits and other changes to the College's budget structure.
The College estimated that the elimination of the death benefit will save Dartmouth between $150,000 and $200,000 annually, the Valley News reported.
The cut will affect all retired and current employees, who learned of the decision last month, SEIU Local 560 president Earl Sweet said in an interview.
The College Benefits Council reviewed benefit packages offered by businesses and the College's peer institutions and found that none provided death benefits, Kim said.
"It's always difficult to take away anything, but we just didn't see any way else to do it," Kim said. "We felt that it was perfectly fair to change [death] benefits the way that we did."
Sweet, however, said that Kim's justification for the elimination of the death benefit "doesn't make sense."
"Just because other schools don't provide the death benefit doesn't mean Dartmouth has to do the same thing," Sweet said.
The editorial board of the Valley News also spoke out against the benefit elimination.
"Changing the terms of employment after one party no longer has the option of deciding whether to continue working for an institution strikes us as wrong," the Valley News wrote in a Sept. 1 editorial.
The College Benefits Council is looking to cut $9 million in health and retirement benefits to help close the $100-million budget gap, according to a June memorandum from former Chief Human Resources Officer Traci Nordberg.
The reduction in health care benefits combined with the elimination of the death benefit will be devastating to current and former employees, especially elderly former employees who have been counting on the death benefit, Sweet said.
The College has been turning to "corporate feudalism" in the face of its difficult budget situation, SEIU 560 vice president Chris Peck said.
"All the trustees are from corporate America, and what do they do?" Peck said. "They take away from the workers. This is a liberal arts college, and that's not supposed to happen. They're supposed to take care of their people."
The SEIU Local 560 began negotiations for a new contract with the College during the winter, Peck said. Union members voted on a new two-year contract on Aug. 6 that protected employees from layoffs for the length of the contract, The Dartmouth previously reported.
The new contract continues to provide health insurance for unionized employees, but employees' co-payments and deductibles will be higher under the new health insurance plan, according to Sweet.
"It's the worst contract I've ever seen," Sweet said. "We're not happy with it, but on the same token we wanted to get some sort of job protection."
The College laid off approximately 70 employees last year before the new contract was signed.
Both unionized and non-union employees are upset and worried about benefit changes and the working environment at the College, Peck said.
SEIU members plan to hold a protest against the elimination of the death benefit on Monday at noon in front of Parkhurst administration building, according to Peck.