County Doctors’ Benefits Package Restored

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to reinstate a generous benefits package it had previously stripped from 800 county doctors.

The doctors lost the benefits when they unionized four years ago. But earlier this year, the doctors dropped out of the union in a move that prompted the board to return the benefits package.

The dispute began in 1999 when county doctors, angered by cutbacks to the health department, voted 341 to 182 to join the national Union of American Physicians and Dentists.

At the time, county officials warned that by unionizing, the doctors would forfeit their right to the “megaflex” package, which has historically been available only to nonunion county employees. That package paid doctors as much as 19% over their base salary to purchase insurance and other benefits, and allowed them to collect any unspent portion of that money as a cash bonus.

Union leaders promised to fight any reduction in the benefits, and in subsequent arbitration and lawsuits argued that the county was attempting to penalize the doctors for unionizing.

Despite the union’s challenges, including complaints it filed with the county’s Employee Relations Commission and the National Labor Relations Board, the county voted in 2001 to replace the doctors’ megaflex plan with a standard benefits package.

Unionization earned the physicians some victories, including more frequent raises and compensation for on-call emergency doctors. But disenchantment with the union’s negotiating tactics and the loss of megaflex soon set in, and in June the doctors elected to drop out of the union by a vote of 331 to 229.

Joe Bader, executive director of the physicians’ union, said that his group would continue to represent county physicians on an individual basis and that it would appeal a judge’s ruling earlier this month that the county did not act in bad faith by switching doctors’ benefits packages.

“We’re going to pursue this case until the end of time,” Bader said.