Different health ins. benefit contributions

What is the name of your state?I work for a small corporation in Rhode Island. I've been with the company for 13 years as an Office Manager and have health insurance benefits partially paid by the employer (ee pays 40% of premium while er pays 60% for SINGLE coverage). I got married two years ago and added my husband to my policy and I have covered the complete cost of his added premium the whole time - employer never contributed to the additional premium.

The president hired a marketing person (who is incidentally the president's nephew, as I am incidentally the president's sister-in-law) and the company is now paying part of the health insurance benefits for both this employee AND his wife on our health policy. Bottom line - I'm paying twice as much for insurance benefits as the new person for the exact same policy.

I was told by our new General Manager (who's been here for all of two months) that the president can do this if he wants to. I'm not sure about the term "differential benefits" in this case and if this indeed is illegal or it's just plain unfair.

I would appreciate any information you can provide before I go to my boss all riled up about it. Thanks in advance for your help!

It is legal for an employer to offer different benefits or provide different levels of financial support for different classes of employees. The employer may define "classes of employees" any legal way they wish to: exempt v. non-exempt, shop v. office, executive v. everyone else, etc. The company owner providing special benefits to a relative is not illegal either and is fairly common.

If you decide to talk to the president about this as a matter of fairness, I suggest you do so when you're calm and not all riled up. You'll get better results that way.