ILWU

Following a protest that drew hundreds on Monday, members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union were formally asked to step down from their “Battle for OUR Benefits” protest after an arbitrator deemed their leaving of work in violation of their employment contract with the Pacific Maritime Association.

Picketing ILWU workers claimed that, following the transition from CIGNA to Zenith American Solutions to handle employee medical claims, the processing and payments of medical bills have become grossly delayed. This ultimately led to their protesting outside the Long Beach PMA offices on Ocean Blvd. yesterday.

However, the orchestrated actions led PMA to call for an arbitrator to help handle the dispute, given that multitudes of employees were not reporting for work in various port locations. The arbitrator eventually sided with PMA Monday afternoon, ordering workers immediately return to their jobs.

According to PMA, ILWU health benefits have remained unchanged since workers signed their last contract in 2008 and that proper claims are continuing to be paid on a timely basis. However, PMA spokesperson Wade Gates also says that there are many cases in which fraud has been indicated.

“ILWU members continue to receive fully employer paid health care with no premiums and 100 percent coverage of basic in-network hospital, medical and surgical benefits, and prescription drugs,” said Wade Gates, a PMA spokesperson. “[Zenith American Solutions] is one of the largest administrators of union benefit plans in the United States… The ILWU and PMA Trustees also added a new plan administrator to specifically monitor claims for fraud and abuse. Since January, the fraud administrator has initially identified tens of millions of dollars in potential abuses by doctors and other providers.”

According to PMA, these abuses include billing for services that were not provided; charging for non-covered services such as cosmetic surgery; and inflating patients’ bills by unnecessarily itemizing related charges.

Read more:

{FG_GEOMAP [33.766461,-118.20028960000002] FG_GEOMAP}