Demonstrators protested towards the mayor’s plan to shift public-sector retirees to Medicare Benefit on Thursday, March 9, 2023.
File picture By Dean Moses
Being an elected official comes with a accountability that features not being purchased by “special interests.” However the particular pursuits some politicians are managed by are our personal former unions.
Unions had a accountability to guard retirees like Margaret, who spent 40 years within the Division of Training. As a substitute, they tried to denationalise her vested Medicare advantages and imposed predatory medical prices on Margaret, whose husband has most cancers and wishes remedy 3 times every week.
They name it “behavioral economics.” The United Federation of Academics (UFT) and DC37 made union offers to finance contracts that retirees don’t profit from as a result of they’re now not within the union. In English, NYC unions bought off retiree advantages and imposed prices on them to funds raises for present staff leaving retirees like Margaret in an affordability disaster requiring a meals pantry to outlive.
What’s worse is these identical “leaders” lied to politicos, telling them they signify present retirees and discount for our advantages. Improper. What they did was unlawful and immoral.
These are all of the issues a retired unionist ought to by no means have needed to say towards their union, by no means thoughts out loud. I used to be a proud union member, Native 2507 and beforehand 1199. I helped staff navigate advantages, pensions, and defended members’ contractual rights, grievance, and was a delegate.
Defending members’ rights was my ardour and my final battle was 9/11 healthcare. For the final 5 years, my ardour has been preserving medical care that was promised to retirees, Medicare and a city-paid complement.
Retirees like Margaret knew a legislation gave them healthcare: “The City will pay the full cost of health coverage.” They relied on it. However her union and the Mayor stole that.
Beforehand, my battles have been towards administration – this time I’ve been preventing my former union, DC37 and Margaret’s, UFT for her and retirees.
We additionally must cope with a secretive union umbrella group often known as the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) that the UFT chief likes accountable for making these selections, not mentioning he holds the biggest single in that committee they usually initiated this mess.
The UFT had been in a nine-year battle with Mayor Bloomberg for a increase. Mayor de Blasio awarded a contract, however with a catch – the UFT needed to persuade the MLC to allocate $1 billion from a well being fund again to the Metropolis to offset the price of trainer raises and improve the price of healthcare for retirees to safe it.
Then DC37 tried to steer the town council to shift retirees from Conventional Medicare to a Medicare Benefit plan – a privatized, predatory different to Medicare that occurs to be the default plan in Challenge 2025. I organized retirees and sued the town to cease this. In 2022, Mayor Adams and the MLC tried to vary the legislation we gained our courtroom selections on to pressure us into Medicare Benefit.
We gained an injunction, then they illegally imposed medical prices on us for the primary time in 60 years to finance raises for the unions’ contracts on retirees’ backs – actually. The Court docket stopped the prices for 2 years, after which Mayor Adams reassessed them by altering our healthcare contract in 2025, placing us again into an affordability disaster. He refused to satisfy with us. This lack of management harmed retirees as a result of now each time they must see a physician, they must resolve if they’ll afford to go, and nonetheless pay their lease or medicines, a priority they didn’t beforehand have.
All of them stole from retirees like Margaret. After deductions, her pension is about $29,000. Her value of dwelling adjustment for 2026 is +$216. The drug plan rose $60/month and he or she’s in medical debt over $4,000 from the Mayor’s value switch, and now wants help from a meals financial institution. Her husband’s most cancers analysis will now incur extra prices 3 times every week for chemo remedy.
Margaret is in her 70s and served the DOE as a UFT member for 40 years. Margaret calls me crying, like many retirees determined for the town to cease what the union and Mayors did to us and asks why the Metropolis and our former unions try to kill us.
We launched laws, however unions threatened to withhold marketing campaign funding to anybody who supported it. The invoice was blocked by council members currying favor with these unions, so we launched one other one. Outgoing Speaker Adrienne Adams then threatened council members with committee seats and funding in the event that they supported us. The Civil Service and Labor Committee Chair Carmen De La Rosa refused to permit our invoice to have a democratic listening to as a result of she mentioned the Speaker didn’t need it to have one.
We launched a state invoice to assist all municipal retirees from being pressured into Medicare Benefit however the AFL-CIO NYS Regional Director, Mario Cilento, lobbied towards it and did the identical within the Metropolis. They mentioned our invoice violated collective bargaining! Lies and intimidation.
Why would unions harm retired unionists? To allow them to proceed to leverage the worth of present retirees’ healthcare as a bargaining chip.
Is there anybody with the braveness to assist 250,000 Margaret’s protect our healthcare and pensions?
Marianne Pizzitola is president of the NYC Group of Public Service Retirees.
