Peoria Area Labor Management Council
Building innovative partnerships between labor and management.

In the Beginning
The story of the Peoria Area Labor Management Council (PALM) begins in the early 1980s, perhaps the most difficult time the area has known in its more than 300-year history. The economy was in trouble, and efforts to stem the tide were hampered by the area's reputation as having a poor labor-management climate.

In early 1984, the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce (PACC) gathered a group of business, labor and civic leaders to address a number of issues facing the community. From those discussions came a decision to focus on labor-management relationships in order to improve the image and competitiveness of our area and its industries.

The following year, PACC received funding to form a not-for-profit labor-management council from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service's (FMCS) labor-management grants program. On Nov. 1, 1985, David Koehler began as executive director, and PALM opened its doors in the Chamber offices.

PALM directed much of its early efforts toward helping labor and management get to know each other better. The adversarial nature of past relationships made communication the first order of business, and establishing open communication led to identifying common concerns and mutual interests.

Participation and cooperation in the workplace eventually became the topic of discussion. Building a working partnership between labor and management became the preoccupation of the entire organization, as everyone worked to overcome the mistakes of the past.
PALM and its members then began working on a number of other fronts, including trust-building, negotiation, conflict resolution and drug-abuse prevention in the workplace.

In addition, PALM instituted special events, including its annual Labor Day Salute Breakfast, Fall Forum and Winter Symposium featuring nationally known experts on labor-management and workforce issues.

LMC Health Programs Inc.
As barriers were coming down, labor and management also began to see the need to find common ground on health care, an issue that still separated them. The timing was right to finally put an end to fighting over who was going to pay for what, and look instead at overall costs — and how to bring them down.

In spring 1990, PALM co-hosted the State Labor-Management Conference, an event entirely devoted to health care. It inspired the formation of the PALM Health Care Task Force, established to explore alternatives to the traditional ways health care had been provided.

In spring 1992, the task force recommended to the PALM Board of Directors that a health care purchasing organization be created. The idea was a simple one: Harness the purchasing power of PALM's member organizations to negotiate better rates.

The result was PALM's health-care subsidiary, LMC Health Programs Inc., which immediately pursued a variety of group-purchasing strategies. The group's first effort was a retail and mail-order prescription drug card plan with Walgreen's Health Initiatives. Methodist Medical Center of Illinois (MMCI) was selected as the cooperative's first PPO hospital locally. Later, LMC added Proctor Hospital as a second PPO provider and created an online-accessible Physician's Network including providers affiliated with both hospitals.

Health Promotion
Despite these savings, health care costs remain too high for many. "We don't have a health care crisis," says Koehler. "We have a health crisis." To address this issue, PALM/LMC turned its attention to health promotion and disease prevention.

In spring 2001, PALM/LMC held a two-night Open Space Forum on Health. More than 200 participants used the open format to discuss a wide range of issues related to health and health care. The PALM/LMC Health Care Task Force gathered new members as a result of the forum. With input from the renewed group, PALM and co-sponsors presented a major conference on health care in March 2003, launched a community walking program April 2003, and brought to the Peoria area a lifestyle medicine program beginning in January 2004.

Moon Walk
Moon Walk, a not-for-profit community health promotion program, encourages walking as a daily activity for health and fun. It is based on research that shows walking just 30 minutes a day five or more days a week can help prevent, arrest and reverse major health issues like obesity, heart disease, hypertension, Type II diabetes and depression.

The program encourages participants to wear a pedometer or otherwise track their walked mileage and report it weekly to “Moon Walk Central.” (In addition to accepting all miles walked, conversion factors are offered for other activities like biking, hiking and aerobics.)

The program’s name derives from its 2003 goal to walk the distance to the moon. In that maiden voyage, 2,100 participants and 35 teams reached the goal in four months and totaled 463,207 miles during the seven-month program—just shy of a 477,400-mile round trip to the moon. Popular demand encouraged annual re-staging of the event, with each year’s goals more ambitious.

In recent years, PALM has brought Moon Walk to two other communities in the state. Challengers from Rockford (2004-2006) and the Quad Cities (2006 - current) added motivation and engendered community spirit by racing the Peoria team to the moon and back.

PALM enlists local sponsors to help run the program and defray the cost of incentives for participants. Registration is $5 per person and is open throughout the program.