BENEFITS AND PROGRAMS Travel Insurance? Don’t leave home without it! THE NEXT TIME YOU TRAVEL out of the country, or even out of your province, do a double-take on your insurance situation. Most of us are taught that it’s a yery wise thing to purchase extra travel insurance. ABOUT YOUR COVERAGE BY GERRY SMITH Who knows what can happen to you or your family out there, heaven forbid. Especially if you go to the United States. If you wind up needing medical atten- tion, remember that south of the line, most of it is in the hands of private hospitals and they are very expen- sive. Even if you get assistance at a public hospital or dinic, they charge Canadians through the nose — cash or credit card up front please! They charge major coin for emergency services involving ambulances, emergency rooms and the like, right down to the last bandage and Kleenex. If you require surgery and/or overnight stays, be prepared to fork over major dollars. And, remember, it’s U.S. dollars. Extra travel insurance, the more the better, is smart planning for travellers. As American Express says — Don’t leave home without it. The same can be applied to travel insurance! But there’s something that you should know. If you have insurance coverage with two insurance carriers, for example, Extended Health Care (EHC) coverage through the collective agreement and travel insurance purchased privately for a vacation trip out of province through a second insurance provider, both insurance policies will be required to pay in the event of claim. Under the Canadian guidelines for “coordination of benefits” the claim will be divided equally between all insurers to the maximum of coverage of each. In the case of your EHC provided by a collective agreement to a lifetime maximum of, for example, $60,000, that maximum could be maxed out with a single catastrophic claim on your travel insurance.It can happen very easily. The balance of the claim would then be covered by the travel insurance provider if it is a second insurance provider. That will happen unless you take the step of pur- chasing your travel insurance from the same extend- ed benefits carrier, (ie. Pacific Blue Cross, Green Shield, etc.) The additional travel insurance part will be the one that pays out first. So the moral of the story is simple. You should always buy extra travel insurance. And you should buy it from the same provider that supplies your EHC coverage within your collective agreement to avoid problems with the coordination of insurance benefits under the Canadian guidelines. This is a prudent thing to do, especially when you think about the implications that getting sick or being involved in a accident can bring, whether it occurs in another Canadian province or a foreign country. Encourage family members and friends to be aware do the same. You should also contact your current extended ben- efits carrier to find out how much they charge for trav- élinsurance. You'll probably find that insurance pack- ages through your carrier are competitively priced with those, say, sold through travel agents and tour companies. Above all, take care! It’s a jungle out there and being extra cautious can be your best insurance! Gerry Smith is the WA's Benefits Appeals Representative Canfor and IWA make high tech advances YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE a techno geek to take advantage of the new job evaluation initiative piloted by Canadian Forest Products and the IWA. Just a few computer skills and easy access to user- friendly programs will get you there. “Canfor has been a leader in embrac- ing technological change in the forest industry, not only in terms of its sawmills, but also in reviewing the pace of that tech change. It also has on-line access to things like hirings, job post- ings, and movement of personnel, etc.” says the IWA national office’s John Mountain, who is the union’s Technical Advisor for Job Evaluation and Rate Determination. Brother Mountain has collaborated with Canfor’s Andy Delany to refine the procedure for timely communication of job evaluation results in nine mills in B.C. and Alberta. They have developed CDs for all but one mill that are being distributed to Plant Job Review Committees. Whereas it used to take 4- 6 weeks to send out hard copy docu- ments, the committees now get near- instant access to job evaluation results, complete with an educational PowerPoint presentation, pictures from their mill job evaluation tours and resource documents. “We've made some pretty good advances,” says Brother Mountain. “At the same time, in this area, we've devel- oped a better working relationship built on mutual respect. The technology has helped us get there.” Results from job evaluations are e- mailed to the plants and are imple- mented faster than they otherwise ret would be. A new job evaluation data base built on Microsoft Access software has made the tracking of jobs easy, eliminated the frequency of disputes and taken the “politics” out of decision making, says Mountain. At the same time, the easier access to | they see changes in job duties, new and Plywood Job Evaluation can be = Pictured |. to r. are the IWA’s John Mountain and Canfor’s Andy Delany looking over the Canfor/IWA job evaluation program. information ensures that Plant Job Review Committees are better able to see all of the jobs in their mill and determine if any jobs are ready for sub- mission for five-year evaluation. Job evaluation tours are still done, although today there is much more that can be done remotely, than in years past. “There’s nothing like getting out into the field and going into the mills and meeting with our members,” says Mountain, who has been a national staffer since 1998. “There is always a need to connect with our members and the industry at a grass-roots level.” For many IWA rank and filers, Brother Mountain is the face of the national union and what it can do to help them review their jobs and ensure their job rates keep pace with the con- stant evolution of tech change in the industry. The modern information age approach springs out of preliminary effort made in the late 90s when Interior Forest Labour Relations’ Greg Wishart initiated and developed a data base program for the southern Interior. It became a sophisticated, high tech way of processing job evalation data for that part of the industry. Upon hearing of the southern Interior program’s successes, Council of Northern Interior Forest Employee Relations’ Mike Bryce set about to develop and implement a similar data- base program for processing job evalua- tion data in the north. The IWA and Canfor, whose nine mills are included in the northern data base, is further partnering the development of commu- nication tools that the program employs through electronic means. Building on the achievements of both Interior sawmill database pro- grams, Brother Mountain has now developed a separate data base to track job evaluation in the plywood industry. In short, a lot has happened in the last five years! Mountain points out that requests for job evalutions happen three ways: they are management driven; employee driven and are initiated by Plant Job Review Committees under the terms of the collective agreement. Upon introducing a new component of technology, the employer can call the IWA for an evaluation. Or the worker can tell the company that he/she wants J their job looked at. “We're seeing more challenges to job rates at the lower end of the wage groupings as workers are coming up against more demands and combination jobs,” says Mountain. Plant Job Review Committees also submit requests for job evaluation when equipment or when new processes are introduced. Mountain reminds union members that all jobs that fall under the terms and conditions of Sawmill Job Evaluation reviewed after a five year period. “Chances are that something has changed in that job,” he notes. “Unnoticed change is even more com- mon when there has been more turnover in any particular job — the job most likely won’t resemble what it looked like years earlier.” For information e-mail Brother Mountain at: mountain@iwa.ca PLUGGING IN WITH CANFOR/IWA CD’s FOR FAST, EASY ACCESS, CANFOR PLANT JOB REVIEW COMMITTEES have access to their own divisional CD with the following information: - Evaluation Results ~ PowerPoint Presentations - Mill tour pictures ~ Resource documents ‘Compatible with Windows 98 or upgrades: AUGUST 2003 THE ALLIED WORKER [ 19