City and school committee appealed decision by Commonwealth Employment Relations Board that city and the school committee had failed to satisfy their statutory bargaining obligations before unilaterally reducing contributions for retired employees’ health insurance premiums.
The Supreme Judicial Court held that city and the school committee were not prohibited by statutes from unilaterally reducing their contribution to retirees’ health insurance premiums without engaging in collective bargaining.
The legislature required retirees to pay full premium cost of their health insurance, subject to statutes, which, if accepted by a municipality, permitted it to pay a portion of the retirees’ premiums, and the authority conferred on a municipality to decide whether and how much to contribute, within defined statutory percentages, would have been wholly undermined by an obligation to collectively bargain.