Title
An Ordinance amending Chapter 2 of the Code of the City of Coral Gables by adding Article XI, entitled "Domestic Partner Benefits"; recognizing domestic partnerships; defining domestic partners for purposes of City benefits; providing leave including, but not limited to, sick leave, family leave and bereavement leave, to City employees with domestic partners; providing City employees with insurance benefits for domestic partners and children of domestic partners; providing City employee domestic partners and children of such domestic partners with all other benefits available to City employee spouses and children of such spouses; providing for application of such benefits to other employees to the extent such employees' collective bargaining representative has included such benefits through the bargaining process; and, directing the City to amend the personnel rules and regulations to provide process and procedures for receipt of benefits in accordance with this Ordinance; providing for an effective date and a severability provision. (Passed on First Reading October 16, 2012)
Brief History
The City recognizes that City employees may establish and maintain important personal, emotional and economic relationships with persons to whom they are not married; that individuals forming such domestic partnerships live in a committed family relationship; and that City employees in domestic partner relationships should be granted employment benefits.
The City has been working towards offering employment benefits to City employees with domestic partners. The City negotiated domestic partner benefits with the Fraternal Order of Police, Coral Gables Lodge No. 7 ("FOP"), during the collective bargaining that recently concluded. The City's proposal provided more benefits that what had been proposed by the FOP. These benefits were recently imposed by the City Commission on September 11, 2012, are currently effective as to the FOP bargaining unit.
The City would like to provide domestic partner benefits to all City employees. Approximately eighty-five percent (85%) of the City's workforce is in a bargaining unit while fifteen (15%) percent of the workforce is non-unionized. The non-unionized employees are mainly managerial and confidential employees of the City. Because the City has now successfully implemented domestic partner benefits with at least one of its Unions, the City would now like to implement the benefits as to the non-unionized employees and continue to bargain such benefits with the two other unions that represent the remainder of City employees - Teamsters Local Union 769 and the International Association of Fire Fighters, Local 1210 ("IAFF").
The domestic partner benefits provided in this Ordinance go beyond the benefits requested by, and implemented with, the FOP in that it provides a City employee with the ability to elect insurance benefits, including health insurance, for his or her domestic partner or domestic partner's children just as a City employee may elect such benefits for his or her spouse or spouse's children. Insurance benefits were not included in the proposal because the FOP does not participate in the City's insurance plans. Instead, the FOP provides its members with health insurance through a Health Trust. The benefits provided by the FOP Health Trust are not in any way controlled by the City. The City also does not control the insurance benefits provided to the IAFF in that its members also receive such benefits through a Health Trust. Finally, the Ordinance also provides to City employees with domestic partners all other benefits that are available to the spouses and children of spouses of City employees.
Should the Ordinance be adopted, the appropriate amendments will be made to the City's Personnel Rules and Regulations providing for the process and procedures for receipt of such benefits.