Author: Site Staff

The rates of return for professionally managed traditional pension plans beat out the returns of employee-controlled managed 401(k) plans from 2000 through 2002, according to Watson Wyatt.

By contrast, 401(k)s outpaced traditional pension, or defined-benefit, plans from 1997 to 1999.

Both styles of retirement plans did poorly during the declining stock market, but defined-benefit plans didn’t lose as much money. In 2002, for example, 401(k)s declined by about 12.3 percent, while defined-benefit plans dipped about 8.4 percent.

Sylvester Schieber, director of research and information at Watson Wyatt, notes that the professional managers running the traditional plans may have diversified their investments more. Employees, on the other hand, may have loaded up on high-risk, high-reward stocks that sometimes perform very well during bull markets and very poorly during bear markets.

“The results probably suggest that employers should be communicating with their workers not only periodically about appropriate allocations and diversification of assets, but they ought to remind people that in order to fulfill the (investment) strategies they’re trying to implement, they’ll have to adjust their portfolios from time to time,” Schieber says. “The folks who manage defined-benefit plans are rebalancing portfolios on a periodic basis. …They certainly have avoided the depth of the market downturn that was inflicted on defined-contribution participants because they weren’t doing that.”

Schieber says a typical employer puts about 50 percent to 60 percent of its retirement assets in stocks. Employers stick to it with discipline, so that when the market rises and they find themselves too heavy in stocks, they’ll sell off perhaps 5 percent to 10 percent. “In a strong bull market it acts as a damper on their return,” Schieber says, but in a bear market, the strategy can reduce losses.

Employees, meanwhile, might find themselves with 60 percent of their portfolio in stocks, and forgo any rebalancing, letting it become 65 percent or 70 percent as the market takes off. “You feel awfully good about that,” Schieber says, “but not when you go through a period like 2000 to 2002.”

Dear Anticipation:

 

It’s a great idea to survey your employees to learn what’s working—and what’s not. Employees appreciate the opportunity to respond, and the organization gathers valuable information, which is vital to its success as the job market really heats up this year.

Collecting responses anonymously is the key to receiving open and honest feedback. People want to be able to respond honestly with impunity. The alternative would be to hire an outside service, such as those that conduct exit interviews, so that people have a greater sense of confidentiality.

Now for the proposed questions:

• Do you believe that our organization offers a quality product or service?
  
• If not, what are your suggestions for fixing the problem(s)?
  
• Do you have fun at work?
  
• If not, what could we be doing to bring more fun into our workplace?
  
• Do you believe that our leaders are enlightened and understand the value of people?
  
• Do you feel like the organization cares about you? How does it take care of you?
  
• Do you feel that your work is meaningful? Why? (Or why not?)
  
• Do you feel good about the people you work with?
  
• Looking at your total compensation package, do you think that you are fairly compensated for the work you do?
  
• Does the company/organization give you ongoing opportunities to make a difference for the community and/or the world?
  

The concept of “re-recruiting” is an important one. Arranging this mechanism as an “early warning system” is an excellent idea, especially in light of the predicted skilled-labor shortages.

SOURCE: Joyce Gioia, strategic business futurist, The Herman Group, Austin, Texas, November 19, 2010

LEARN MORE: The True Value of Hiring and Retaining Top Performers.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce Newsletter

Forty-four former IT employees of Best Buy are suing the company for age discrimination.

The class-action suit alleges that the Richfield, Minnesota-based retailer laid off the group and other employees based on their ages. According to a statement from Gray Plant of Mooty Mooty & Bennett, the law firm representing the employees, the plaintiffs range in age from 40 to 71, and the average age at the time of their terminations this year and last year was 51.

The terminations, according to the law firm, were a part of Best Buy’s strategy to outsource technology work to Accenture.

Stephen Snyder, lead attorney for the employees, says that “many of them had received strong performance ratings and bonuses at their most recent reviews.”

Best Buy spokeswoman Susan Busch told Workforce Management, “We do believe these claims are without merit and intend to vigorously defend the action.” Busch did not comment further.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard–but has yet to decide–an age-discrimination case that revolves around “disparate impact,” or whether it is illegal to unintentionally discriminate against older workers in employment decisions such as terminations.

As analysts study the financial footprint of the merger between Kmart Holding Corp. and Sears, Roebuck and Co., workforce management experts are examining the impact of the $11.5 billion deal on employees.

“What this means is what I call ‘creative destruction,’ ” says Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Every time there is a merger this big, there are tremendous layoffs.”

Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting and investment banking firm in New York, predicts that there will be consolidations and major staff reductions at both companies, but the changes will be “evolutionary.”

He points out that Kmart and Sears have been cutting people for 15 years. “How are they going to compete with Wal-Mart? Sears will sell off some divisions,” Davidowitz says. “So the question now isn’t ‘How many jobs are the two companies going to lose?’ but ‘How many jobs are they going to save?’ If this merger isn’t successful, there won’t be any jobs for anybody.

“What we are looking at here is survival.”

The bold merger was masterminded last month by financier and Kmart Chairman Edward Lampert, who turned the once-bankrupt retail chain into an unexpected $3 billion success story. The new company called Sears Holdings Corp. will be the third-largest retailer, behind Wal-Mart and Home Depot, with about $55 billion in annual revenues. Lampert will be chairman.

The company will have its headquarters at the Sears head office in the Chicago suburbs but will maintain a “significant presence” in Troy, Michigan, where Kmart is based.

Despite inevitable layoffs, Jack Plukett, who follows Wal-Mart and is chairman of Plunkett Research Ltd. in Houston, says that most Kmart and Sears employees will be better off. He describes Lampert as an extraordinarily talented investor.

“The futures of both companies were very uncertain. Sears was slowly sinking,” Plunkett says. “Lampert has proven he can make profits, and in the long run, that will help employees.”

In their effort to compete with Wal-Mart, Lichtenstein says, the two retailing warhorses will likely cut wages and benefits. The notion that retail workers in America will earn middle-class wages as they once did working for companies like Sears “has gone out the door.

“Wal-Mart is the template for the 21st century philosophy of low benefits and low wages,” Lichtenstein says. “Retail workers will be the working poor. What the Kmart/Sears merger means is that any retail alternative to Wal-Mart is history.”

Adds Stanford Jacoby, professor of human resources and organizational behavior at UCLA, “It will be interesting to watch pay and benefits. Another tricky part will be merging the operation. Staying where they are for now is a first good step. But eventually they will have one headquarters. Holding on to good people will be a problem.

“But Lampert is very impressive, very savvy.”

A new report by the Cedar Group shows that “organizations are doing fewer major upgrades and are instead focusing on implementation of new human capital management modules such as performance management, learning management or analytics.”

The Cedar data shows that growth of tech spending slowed in 2004 to a 6 percent overall increase, down from the big jump between 2002 and 2003 of 27 percent.

The Cedar Workforce Technologies Survey involved 396 organizations representing nearly 9 million employees. It finds that analytics applications (such as reports showing turnover rates among employees who produce the most revenue) are the fastest-growing technology area, up 30 percent from 2003.

Analytics is technology that has been around for a few years but “is just now starting to take off,” says Alexia Martin, Cedar’s director of research and analytics. “I think that organizations first had to come to some level of administrative excellence with their core record-keeping systems, and then come to service delivery excellence with self-service, but now they can come to performance excellence with the introduction of workforce analytics.

“The technology now exists for organizations to implement workforce analytics such that they can analyze workforce data against organizational trends, business goals and benchmarks and get a handle on a future course of action to improve things like revenue, expense reduction, customer satisfaction.”

Other findings from Cedar:

• As in prior years, the primary barriers to successful technology projects are inadequate budgets, the inability to show the potential payback and inadequate internal resources.
  
  
• Fewer people are measuring the results of their self-service technology projects. This is probably because many implementations have been in place for four to five years, and the big payback–and perhaps the best time for measuring ROI–is in the first couple of years.
  
  
• Companies with “simple management reports”–such as headcount and absenteeism reports–have higher operating income growth than companies that aren’t generating such reports. Also, firms using skills-management reports showing which employees have and need certain skills enjoy higher operating incomes than firms not generating such reports.

T he second target in New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s war against alleged broker misconduct may be small, but its clients aren’t.

    After taking on brokerage giant Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc., Spitzer on Friday filed a fraud and antitrust lawsuit against Universal Life Resources Inc., a San Diego-based life and disability broker with $25.3 million in 2003 revenues, and its owner, Douglas P. Cox.

    Like the Marsh lawsuit, the suit against ULR charges the broker with steering business to insurers that paid it secret override commissions. In addition, the suit charges ULR with extracting other undisclosed fees that underwriters passed on to policyholders through higher premiums and actively concealing the payments from clients.

    The clients allegedly defrauded include Ashland Inc., Dell Inc., Marriott International Inc., Safeway Inc., United Parcel Service Inc., Viacom Inc. and other well-known companies, according to the complaint.

    The suit also cites three insurers–UnumProvident Corp., MetLife Inc. and Prudential Financial Inc.–for participating in the alleged schemes.

    “Today’s case demonstrates that the corrupt practices first laid bare in the Marsh suit are present in additional sectors of the industry,” Spitzer said in a statement announcing the suit against ULR. “Secret payoffs and conflicts of interest that infected the market for property and casualty insurance have taken root in the employee benefits market as well.”

    ULR representatives could not be reached for comment.

    Unum, Prudential and MetLife representatives said the insurers are cooperating but declined to comment further.

    ULR has recently been the target of other lawsuits leveling similar allegations. Lawyers representing an Intel Corp. employee filed a proposed class-action suit against the broker in a San Diego federal court last month, charging that ULR took secret payments to steer business to certain insurers. United Policyholders, a California consumer group, earlier sued ULR in a California state court for allegedly failing to disclose contingent commission agreements.

    Cox, ULR’s president and CEO, has denied these charges and said last month that ULR “maintains proper relationships with its clients and their insurance carriers.”

    Privately held ULR, with 80 employees, specializes in placing group life, disability and other coverages for Fortune 1,000 companies.

    In 2003, ULR generated $565.6 million in premiums for MetLife, $214.3 million for Prudential and $101.6 million for Unum, the suit says.

    While it claimed undivided loyalty to its clients–and included a provision in client contracts stating that it “shall accept no compensation of any kind whatsoever from any insurance company”–ULR generated almost half of its revenue from undisclosed override commissions based on volume, renewal rates and profitability, the complaint charges. The broker also reaped excessive and undisclosed “communications fees” for informational material distributed to employees, the cost of which insurers charged back to insurance plan participants, the suit alleges.

    Of ULR’s $25.3 million in 2003 revenues, $11.5 million came from overrides and $5.6 million from communications fees, the suit says.

    The broker consistently steered business to Unum, Prudential and MetLife to gain override commissions and shut out insurers that would not join “the club,” the suit says. Minnesota Life Insurance Co., for example, refused to make override payments unless ULR disclosed them to clients, and the broker refused to do business with the insurer afterwards, the suit says. Aetna Inc. ended an override agreement with ULR in 2001 and has had “virtually no success” winning new business from the broker since then, according to the complaint.

    Spitzer’s suit cites several clients that ULR has allegedly defrauded, including:

• Washington, D.C.-based hotel operator Marriott, which bought disability coverage from Unum through ULR in 2003. According to the complaint, ULR rigged the list of three “finalists” competing for the Marriott account by pushing out a low-bidding insurer that had no override agreement with the broker.

  
  

• New York-based media giant Viacom, which earlier this year bought group life and accident coverage from Prudential through ULR. According to the complaint, ULR persuaded Prudential to state that its benefit communications fee was the same as ULR’s–$10 per employee–when Prudential actually charges only $3.45 per employee. Viacom hired ULR for the communications job.

  
  

• Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker Dell, which hired ULR in 2001 to place employee life insurance coverage. While ULR wanted to place the business with Unum, the insurer said it could submit the lowest bid only if it did not pay the broker a $120,000 fee called for in a request for proposals. ULR knew that override commissions would make up for the lost fee but also feared that Unum’s failure to report the fee in a U.S. Department of Labor filing on the Dell plan would start “red flags flying” at Dell, the suit says. ULR persuaded Unum to make a false filing reporting the $120,000 payment even though no such payment was made, the suit charges.

  
  

    Spitzer’s suit levels fraud, antitrust and other charges and seeks disgorgement of all ULR profits arising from the alleged illegal activity.

    Industry analysts say the ULR suit is likely to have less impact on the life/health insurance industry than the Marsh suit is having on the property/casualty industry, in part because no benefits broker is as dominant as Marsh is in the property/casualty business.

    “Nobody has quite the same significance on the life side,” says Rodney Clark, director of financial services for Standard & Poor’s Corp. in New York.

    “The allegations are serious, (but) the dollars are relatively minor,” says John Ward, chairman of the Cincinnati-based Ward Group.

From the November 15 issue of Business Insurance. Written by Douglas McLeod and Gloria Gonzalez.

Dear History:



Human resources-related BPO has evolved during the last four years, as both buyers of BPO products and service providers have journeyed along their respective learning curves.

BPO as a human resources tool is in its infancy, even four years after a flurry of activity and consolidation in the market. In the past few years, 15 different vendors have won 36 major human resources BPO contracts, or about 2.4 contracts per vendor. Accenture, Convergys and Exult combined for 22 of these deals, leaving the other 12 vendors to average about one contract each. The learning curve of buyers and vendors is critical to setting and meeting expectations. The newness of human resources BPO and the time required to implement the initial phase of a deal means we’re just beginning to get good data on the results of these deals.

All these BPO deals are expected to create business value by reducing or avoiding certain costs or investments, by improving productivity and performance, or both. Since emerging as a viable strategy several years ago, BPO has been saddled with the expectation that it will save companies money in the weak economy. Service-level agreements have focused on reducing costs in human resources processing and administration, reducing vendor-management costs, and minimizing investment in technology design and integration.

By and large, BPO has met those expectations. Companies have not shared specific numbers publicly because of contract terms and data-privacy concerns, but many clients report success in their comprehensive outsourcing of human resources. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been bumps in the road, but they’ve been related mostly to navigating the learning curve rather than questions about BPO as a viable strategy.

Buyers and service providers are shifting expectations beyond costs in 2004, with the focus on aligning human resources performance with business performance. There’s growing interest in linking recruiting with performance management to enable workforce planning/management. Meanwhile, the desire for stronger measurement fuels interest in human resources scorecards and sophisticated decision-support tools that boost the strategic value of workforce management. This will further shift expectations for BPO deals.

Ultimately, BPO deals meet expectations when they’re viewed as a partnership. It’s a cliché but it’s true: BPO is either win-win or lose-lose. The degree to which a deal realizes its intended goals is determined not only by the service provider’s level of delivery, but also by how well workforce-management executives govern the execution of BPO contracts. Some companies have learned this faster than others, but all will get there in the end.

SOURCE: Marc Pramuk, program manager, HR Management & Staffing Services Research,IDC, Framingham, Massachusetts, December 12, 2003.

LEARN MORE:Passing the Bucks.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce Newsletter

Employers looking to reduce their prescription drug costs have a new tool available to them: independent prescription drug-price comparison Web sites.

    Many employers already encourage their employees to use the online price comparison tools their insurers or prescription benefit managers make available to them. These Web sites give employees information on generic drugs or the price benefits of ordering prescription drugs by mail rather than purchasing them at retail outlets.

    New independent Web sites created by either government officials or private companies go beyond these offerings, though, to provide price comparisons between pharmacy chains or regional pharmacies and offer comprehensive alternative drug options. For example, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has a Web site that compares prices for the 25 most commonly prescribed drugs at pharmacies in every county in the state.

    Although these new Web sites were initially geared toward uninsured individuals without prescription drug coverage, some of them are adding information and tailoring their product offerings to help employer clients reduce their prescription drug spending.

    Such sites are seen as particularly useful to employees in consumer-driven health plans, providing them with information they need to make informed and cost-effective purchasing decisions.

    For many years, the major managed-care companies and PBMs have used Web sites to guide their members’ decisions regarding drug costs. For example, Franklin Lakes, N.J.-based Medco Health Solutions Inc. has a price-comparison tool on its Web site so members can check the formulary status of medications and compare the cost of various medications to generics or other brand-name alternatives, a spokeswoman for the PBM said. Medco members can also compare their copayment for a 90-day mail-order supply versus a 30-day supply purchased retail, the spokeswoman says.

    These Web sites, though, have limitations that prevent employers from fully realizing all potential cost savings, observers say.

    One is that they list only direct generics rather than alternatives in the same therapeutic drug class that may be as effective as the prescribed drug, says Toby Rogers, president of Rxaminer, a Chicago-based company that offers an independent drug-price comparison Web site.

    “People have done a good job of getting (employees) to take direct generics,” he says. “Where I think employers and other payers are leaving money on the table is on indirect generics and brand-name alternative drugs. In getting people to switch to those, there are substantial savings implications for employers.”

    The new Web sites try to fill this void by offering information on indirect generic or brand-name alternatives. For example, if the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor is entered into the search engine, the Web sites will not only search for brand-name alternatives but also for generic alternatives for other drugs in Lipitor’s therapeutic class.

    Rxaminer takes this approach a step further by offering information on the dosage levels at which an alternative drug needs to be taken to be as effective as the originally prescribed drug, Rogers says. The drug and dosage information is developed by Rxaminer’s medical board, which comprises physicians and pharmacists.

    These newer Web sites are helpful because they give the kind of specific information on drug alternatives and dosage levels that assists doctors in writing effective prescriptions, says Bridget Eber, national pharmacy practice leader for Lincolnshire, Ill.-based Hewitt Associates Inc. “The newer sites do that level of translation for the participant and the provider,” Eber says. “That could have some very specific cost savings implication. The other advantage is that the newer Web sites tend to be more comprehensive in identifying more drugs that treat a given condition.”

    Although only a handful of employers currently use these Web sites, there are several potential advantages for plan sponsors, observers say.

    One of the key advantages is cost savings. Anecdotal evidence indicates that employers using these new Web sites have already seen solid savings, consultants and others say.

    Rxaminer data shows that plan sponsors have saved about $75 per member per year by using its system, so that a plan with 1,000 members can save about $75,000 per year. Rogers cites potential savings to employers of 18% to 22%, a number supported by anecdotal information from consultants.

    Rogers says one of his company’s employer clients achieved 7% annual savings with just 10% of its members using the Web site. “Most employers agree that that’s a big enough number that, as a payer, it’s worth looking into,” he says.

Role in consumerism
    The employers currently using these Web sites have health-plan designs that feature coinsurance mechanisms or take a consumerist approach, with designs that offer a financial incentive to employees to switch to alternative drugs, observers say.

    “If (employees) can come to our Web site and cut their prescription drug bill in half, they might be able to stay under their limit and not have to pay anything out of pocket,” says Gabriel Levitt, vice president of research for White Plains, N.Y.-based PharmacyChecker.com. “They can stretch the sacred health-care dollars they have available to them.”

    As more employers implement coinsurance or consumer-directed health-plan designs, these Web sites can serve as a key part of an overall cost-reduction strategy, observers say.

    “It doesn’t hold much value for the employers of the world today,” says Kevin DeStefino, a national pharmacy consultant for Watson Wyatt Worldwide who is based in Phoenix. “It holds promise for tomorrow’s benefit design, being driven by consumerism.”

    “I would anticipate that employers would have a high demand for them,” Hewitt’s Eber says. “I think employers would be more interested after there’s a little more savings reported.”

    Plan designs with set copayments do not offer many financial incentives for employees to switch, an issue the new Web sites are attempting to address.

    Rxaminer is piloting a new product that would allow employers with traditional copayment structures to offer financial incentives to their employees for choosing lower-cost prescription drugs.

    In this program, employees would be able to look up prescribed drugs online and see the drug options available, a few of which would feature rebates for employees to use the alternative drugs, Rogers says.

    The employees would receive rebates for purchasing from the drugs’ vendors, and the employer would save money because the employees are selecting the lower-priced drugs–even though employers would pay the rebates to their employees.

    “That’s our answer to those employers that can’t change their plan designs but are looking for ways to motivate members to switch,” Rogers says. “The best plans are these plans with member incentives.”

From the November 8 issue of Business Insurance. Written by Gloria Gonzalez.

Dear Out of Options:



Your aversion to forced ranking/distribution is common. Many human resources leaders find these approaches draconian. Although some companies have been successful–GE, for example, is famous for “rank and yank” as a cultural cornerstone–others such as Ford became infamous for doing it wrong.

First, consider what you want to accomplish and what forced rankings/distributions can do. Forced ranking, also called stacked ranking, ranks individuals from best to worst, typically within a department or a job level. Forced distribution buckets people, typically in bell-curve fashion, and limits how many fall into each category.

Either can be used:

• To differentiate between employees when making decisions about employment, promotion, training and pay.
  
• In the case of forced ranking, to supplement an existing performance-management system by rating individuals in relation to their peers.
  
• To distinguish between employees for qualities such as flexibility, innovation and potential when a job requires a very narrow range of performance.
  

Forced ranking/distribution is a blunt instrument best used in consultation with legal counsel either (1) to help make difficult decisions related to reductions-in-force or (2) as a tool to identify high-potential employees.

If these are not your goals, what’s your alternative? Unfortunately, there’s no “off the shelf” prescription. Building a meaningful, comprehensive performance-management system to meet your goals and fit your culture consumes time and energy. It requires training, review, sessions on avoiding rater error, multi-rater approaches and coaching managers to deal with conflict.

Training is especially critical. Without it, organizations may spend hours on a system for which the outcome is virtually no variation in ratings–the opposite extreme of forced ranking. Often, this occurs because poorly trained managers have an inadequate understanding of their subordinates’ jobs and are unable to set challenging but achievable goals. This leads to either a “slam dunk” or an impossible challenge, resulting in a silly discussion that avoids conflict to spare people’s feelings.

It’s important to look at your organization’s goals and what you want to accomplish. Forced ranking/distribution has its time and place if your goal is to prune or promote. If your goal is to systematically guide the performance of your organization to a higher level, take another route.

SOURCE: Randolph K. Harrison and David L. Glueck, consultants, Capital H Group, Chicago, December 10, 2003.

LEARN MORE:Dead Man’s Curve.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. Also remember that state laws may differ from the federal law.

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Dear Workforce Newsletter

The new look of Washington, D.C., is likely to be more business-friendly than the past four years have been.

Not only have the Republicans kept the White House and held both houses of Congress, but some of the more moderate Democrats, like Sen. John Breaux, are leaving, putting a more liberal face on the Democratic Party.

For employers, this means a renewed focus on the agenda of the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress, including:

• A potential effort by regulators to clarify parts of the Family and Medical Leave Act, reducing some confusion among employers about which health conditions qualify.
  
• Tax changes to facilitate the spread of health savings accounts. Republican Rep. John Boehner, a proponent of health savings accounts who calls them “just what the doctor ordered,” beat his Ohio opponent by a 69 to 31 percent margin. Congress could also allow “association health plans” to be offered by groups such as the National Restaurant Association.
  
• Wage and hour law changes. In the Senate, Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who heads up the committee handling workforce issues, cruised to re-election with a 66 to 34 percent margin. Sen. Gregg may continue his chairmanship (if he doesn’t, Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi could take his chairman’s spot). Gregg is likely to support business-friendly legislation, including the president’s efforts to bring comp time to the private sector.
  
• Immigration-law changes. Some U.S employers — particularly in the tech sector — are upset that there aren’t enough visas to allow skilled employees to enter the United States. But Austin T. Fragomen Jr., a partner in the business immigration law firm of Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP, says employers might get help during the upcoming Congress. “The Bush administration and Republican Congress have been much more favorable toward business immigration issues … pretty much across the board,” he says. Fragomen believes there’s a chance that Congress will allow more people to enter the United States if the immigrants have graduate degrees.

Also, the HR Policy Association, a lobbying group for senior executives in human resources, is hoping that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security writes business-friendly rules that allow I-9 forms to be filed electronically.

Opposition not quieting
Democrats — despite being in the minority — will be pushing for more government involvement in controlling health-care costs. The 1.7 million-member Service Employees International Union says that it won’t stop campaigning. Its efforts will continue through December to “remind elected officials that the top economic concern among all voters is health care and that they will be held accountable on the issue of health-care reform.”

The union said that in this campaign, it made “the largest investment by any single organization in the history of American politics: a total of $65 million.”

And former human resources executive Lynn Woolsey, who represents California’s sixth district — a bastion of liberalism in Marin and Sonoma Counties — tells Workforce Management she’ll work vigorously to make sure Republicans don’t “overreach,” feeling that they have a mandate to pass legislation that in her view is damaging to rank-and-file employees.

Woolsey says that “the Democrats are going to propose some good programs” during the next Congress, citing her own effort to expand employee leave as an example, but also saying she’ll keep fighting for more employee-friendly changes to federal health-care laws.

Indeed, Tim Cullen, senior vice president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wisconsin, says that employers themselves may soon tire of lackluster results in the efforts to control health costs. Cullen tells the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if costs don’t slow down by the next presidential election, businesses might “throw in the towel” and support far more government involvement in the health-care system.

Voters in California narrowly defeated Proposition 72, which would have forced medium and large employers to pay 80 percent of employees’ health insurance premiums or contribute to a state fund. Gretchen Young, vice president of government affairs for Aon Consulting, says that the initiative could have passed had the very popular California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, not opposed it. And, adds Young, some employers wouldn’t be too upset if the initiative went through–particularly those that currently pay for employees’ health care. “Employers who have (provided) health care are saying, ‘I want a level playing field,’ ” Young says.

Some employers, Young says, also believe that if more employees are covered, it could reduce the costs of uncompensated care that are eventually paid for by all Californians.

–Todd Raphael