Dear Local 455 Members,
I write to all of you to make sure our Local 455 Kroger membership is aware and educated on our fast-approaching healthcare open enrollment scheduled to begin November 8th, 2024, to December 15th, 2024. This is your only window to enroll for healthcare coverage for plan year 2025, and to secure the benefit improvements you worked hard for and earned in your recent MOU you ratified on March 12th, 2024.
It is important that the word gets around to all of our brothers and sisters working hard in Kroger stores, in Local 455 areas, to enroll during the enrollment window or you will lose health insurance coverage for 2025 for you and your dependents. Following our Union ratification of the Houston MOU, several benefit improvements are scheduled to take effect next year, beginning 1/1/25. They include lower deductibles, lower weekly premiums, lower hours eligibility requirements, and moving all currently eligible participants in Plan 2 into the more affordable and better Plan, Plan 1.
- Lower deductibles in both Plans 1 & 2 mean more take home pay for you and your family and future participants of the Plans.
- Lower weekly premiums by 40% in both Plans will result in our membership having more weekly take-home pay, while maintaining the important healthcare coverage you are your family needs.
- Lower eligibility requirements, to 24 hours, will result in more of our brother and sister members being eligible for healthcare coverage.
- Effective 1/1/25, all participants currently in Plan 2 would be eligible and move into Plan 1 (the more affordable plan with better benefits).
- Increase in your short-term disability/sick pay, so you will be in a better position to pay your bills when you get sick, and lose time from work.
If you miss your enrollment window, you will miss out on some of the key benefit improvements you earned in your recent MOU. These benefits are there to provide you with a total comprehensive package, in addition to your wages. Please be sure and take care of your healthcare enrollment for you and your family, as soon as the enrollment window opens.
Kroger believes that the main reason for the decline of worker participation in the healthcare plans is due to workers just not caring about the healthcare plans. The Union has always maintained that, when we experience a decline in worker participation in the healthcare plans it’s not because workers do not want the coverage, it’s because Kroger has made the Plans unreachable by high eligibility hours requirements or unaffordable by plan design changes.
Simply put, it is important for all workers who are eligible and can take the healthcare coverage should do so. The more participants our Fund has the larger the risk pool is for our membership, which will help insulate ourselves from future benefit cuts, due to the guardrail’s language in the MOU. The more workers participate in the plan, the better off the plan and the coverage will be. The improvements achieved in your MOU should help our healthcare plans have better participation, due to being made more obtainable and affordable. Now is the time to achieve a high enrollment to show Kroger we do value our healthcare and we want to preserve it and make it better!
Thank you for what you do serving our communities every day, and for supporting the Union is our efforts to make Kroger a better place to work.
In Solidarity,
W. Brandon Hopkins
President