LP has told employees they will have to start paying for part of their health care insurance, ending a long-standing company practice that had covered those costs without employee contributions. The memo reached the entire organization, and staffers reacted with surprise and unhappiness as the change landed inside.
Cooper wrote in the memo that the company still views benefits as part of what lets people thrive at work and outside it. The same memo said healthcare costs keep rising and that the way healthcare is funded has shifted across the market, giving LP a rationale for moving away from its earlier approach.
Cooper memo to LP
“We believe exceptional benefits are an important part of creating an environment where our people can thrive both personally and professionally, and that’s not changing,” Cooper wrote in the memo obtained by Status. The message paired that promise with a new requirement for employees, creating a direct tradeoff between preserving strong benefits and asking workers to share part of the bill.
“At the same time, the cost of providing healthcare keeps rising and, across the market, the way healthcare is funded has shifted. ’s approach of not asking employees to contribute to healthcare costs lasted longer than any of our peers in the face of these rapidly changing market dynamics.” The memo did not specify how much employees will pay or when the change will begin, leaving the practical cost to workers unresolved for now.
Everyone in the organization
The change is broader than a newsroom adjustment. The memo affects everyone in the organization, not just news staffers, which means the policy reaches across LP rather than a single unit or desk.
That scope helps explain why the development created quite the stir inside. Employees had been speculating about what would happen to their good pay and benefits when Mike, the 84-year-old founder, ultimately passes, and the memo landed against that backdrop of uncertainty.
employees and benefits
For employees, the immediate issue is simple: part of the insurance bill is shifting from the company to workers. What remains open is the size of that share and the timing, which will determine how quickly the change shows up in paychecks and benefits administration.
For now, the memo draws a line under LP’s longer-than-peer practice of covering healthcare costs entirely. The company is keeping the benefits package, but not the old funding model, and employees will be the ones who absorb the difference when the change takes effect.
