In September, Chapter 293 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the SEC creating a new Domestic Partners Benefits Program at the agency. Under this agreement, the SEC will provide certain benefits to an employee’s domestic partner and the domestic partner’s eligible dependent children. These benefits will include employee dental insurance, employee vision insurance and a new Health Insurance Premium Reimbursement benefit.

The Health Insurance Premium Reimbursement benefit is a unique one which will allow employees to recover the lesser of 85% of the actual cost for health benefits coverage for a domestic partner’s self only or self and family non-subsidized health insurance plan, or the maximum employer monthly contribution for any FEHB insurance option for the Plan Year.

These reimbursements will occur semiannually, for expenses commencing on January 1, 2010. This implementation date may be somewhat delayed due to a bidding protest recently filed by a bidder for the contract to administer the agency’s new Supplemental Health Benefits Program. Collection and verification of Domestic Partner Declarations is one of the tasks that will be performed by the new administrator. As soon as this bidding protest is resolved, we will notify employees of the new date to submit a declaration.

NTEU and the SEC are at the forefront on this issue. Generally, the federal government has become a laggard in providing domestic partner benefits. Indeed, more than 53 percent of Fortune 500 companies already offer such benefits to their workers—as do many public employers, including 13 states and 201 local governments. Thus, aside from the issue of the basic fairness and the importance of leading by example, the federal government needs to provide these benefits to remain competitive with the private sector in the face of a looming personnel crisis.

As NTEU National President Colleen Kelley recently stated in testimony submitted to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, “More than half of the federal government’s employees will become eligible for retirement in the next 10 years, and approximately 40 percent of the federal workforce is expected to retire – in the next five years alone, it will be 30 percent of the workforce—600,000 individuals.” The fact is, President Kelley further stated, “Tens of thousands of private companies, growing numbers of non-profit employers, including colleges and universities, and the very entities that are competing with the federal government for the recruitment of the best and brightest of the workforce are offering domestic partner benefits. Market forces and the good example of the private sector now put the issue before the federal government.”

NTEU also supports passage of HR 2517, the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act. This legislation, introduced by Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and cosponsored by 116 other members of the House, would extend to domestic partners many of the benefits and obligations that currently are available to married couples. NTEU also supports the companion provision in the Senate, S. 1102, introduced by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME), which has 23 co-sponsors. The Union hopes that the SEC’s new benefits will help advance this legislation.