Hypocrisy Roars

Leo roars, but there is no substance; it is purely a spectacle scream for relevance when that ship long sailed. Proud the retired unionists saw through that at the RTC meeting this past week. Bravo!

Retirees Deserve Facts, Not Fear

Leo Casey’s posts accusing me of “union-busting” and warns of calamity if retirees are no longer treated as union members for healthcare purposes. That framing is emotionally charged — and fundamentally misleading and completely unsubstantiated, but when has Unity cared about any of that? What retirees deserve instead is an honest discussion of what rights we actually have, what protections actually exist, and what has actually happened in recent years. Not facing all that -you are still lying to yourself. Don’t worry, I will tell you and cite it and there is plenty to share on that in the next few posts!

Retirees are not bargaining-unit members

This is not ideology; it is law.

Retirees are not employees. We do not work under a collective bargaining agreement. We do not vote on contracts. We cannot strike. We are not covered by grievance or arbitration procedures. Calling retirees “union members” does not magically confer collective bargaining rights — it simply blurs an important legal distinction. And if any union leader is telling you they will bargain for a current retiree, they are not being truthful. They can’t - and I will cite more of that soon.

Healthcare for current retirees is not collectively bargained. Wages and working conditions for active workers is. Retiree benefits should have been preserved and protected by the unions (MLC), not bargained away to finance a UFT or DC37 contract. Why would anyone think it would be ok to change something so much for a vulnerable population without their input would be ok? Even more egregious, stick retirees in an inferior plan (yes, that was confirmed by the court), and make them pay for the better plan they can’t afford, while keeping the actives free? Going back 30 years, we can show city documents that state the insurance you have at the time you retire is what you keep! And when we left, we either had a pre-Medicare plan and were promised Medicare and City paid supplement when eligible or Medicare with a Supplement, but we also had a choice of plans we could change every two years. And the union leaders we knew and loved in our generations of service would never have whittled down our healthcare, passed costs onto us, and lied about it. Retirees were loyal unionists in their day. Why would their former union rob their healthcare from them? That is anti-union behavior.

‘Sectoral bargaining’ did not protect retirees when it mattered

Leo argues that sectoral bargaining through the MLC has uniquely protected retirees and that separating retirees from this framework would be “calamitous.” Recent history tells a different story. The MLC leadership used the power of their union’s weighted vote to control what benefits everyone received, and no, it was not appreciated. In NYC we participate in “coalition” bargaining, where the coalition is optional - the MLC jammed this down everyone’s throat.

Over the last several years:

• Retirees were excluded from meaningful decision-making on healthcare changes and only found out about it in the media. We would have made great advisors to the unions.

• Retirees were not asked to vote on proposals that directly affected them, and even worse, those making the decisions didn’t even fact-check what they were putting out and claiming as fact.

• Cost-saving agreements were reached that relied heavily on retiree concessions. Since they had no vote, they were used and taken advantage of.

• Retirees had to resort to litigation to preserve promised benefits as a result when their own former union sided with management to diminish their earned and paid for healthcare. Why? They bargained us away.

This did not happen because “sectoral bargaining” failed accidentally. It happened because retirees, lacking any enforceable bargaining rights, were the easiest group to take from. Being part of the “pool” did not prevent that. In fact, it enabled it. The undemocratic weighted voting power structure did too. Not to mention the UFT “Health Committee” made decisions without ever seeing the full contract and little knowledge of healthcare. They were used, to support the house initiative with complete disregard of the actual people they purported to be protecting. I have long said a good leader does not surround themselves with people to tell them what they want to hear - but with those who will tell the leader what they need to hear. Not giving your health committee ALL the facts to make an INFORMED decision - well - you just gave them enough to support what you wanted. And because they trusted the leader, they had no reason to second-guess what they were fed.

If sectoral bargaining guaranteed equity and protection, retirees would not have repeatedly found themselves defending benefits they were told were secure for their lifetime and came to rely on when they needed them most. And again, a union can legally negotiate benefits for in-service workers and their future retirees in their own bargaining unit, NOT current retirees, because they are not in the bargaining unit and do not vote on contracts.

The ACA analogy is misplaced

Leo’s comparison to the Affordable Care Act is rhetorically clever but substantively wrong.

The ACA protects people with pre-existing conditions because Congress enacted binding federal law that insurers must follow. Those protections are enforceable in court. They do not depend on goodwill or internal union philosophy. And there are no pre-existing conditions protections in Medicare, which Geoff Sorkin once wrongly stated. Retirees who try to get out of Medicare Advantage after 12 months in one, are subject to underwriting (unless they reside in ME, MA, CT, or NY) and could be denied a supplement or charged an unaffordable premium if they had high-risk pre-existing conditions.

Retiree healthcare protections are statutorily guaranteed and from the history of the health program, offered a choice of plans and increasing those benefits since 1942. In-Service workers are free to diminish their healthcare and there is an established pattern, we have previously posted a loooong paper trail showing that. The recent past shows how fragile promises can be when budgets tighten or priorities shift, or your former union chooses to implode the health fund and doesn’t tell anyone. Imagine stating at an MLC meeting that it was the “primary goal of the Tri-partite committee” to move away from the HISF while not having something in place before imploding it and saying it in passing while trying to convince the unions to support the NYCEPPO. And more importantly, never ask those union leaders if they were okay with that. I remind you, healthcare is a mandatory subject of bargaining for every union and their members in the City.

The NYC Administrative code 12-126 says, “The City will pay the full cost of health coverage for every employee, retiree and their dependent up to the HiP HMO rate.” I don’t think anyone imagined the UFT & DC37 contract deals would suppress the HiP rate, which would drain the Stabilization Fund faster, and later admit they did it on purpose to implode it. I also don’t think anyone would imagine that the MLC would also admit they forced retirees into the MA to create a “cash flow” and knew it would not solve their problem but would delay them having to address it. Thank you Comptroller Lander.

Law is protection. Discretion is not. And clearly, promises made were not meant to be kept if these were your unions.

Splitting the pool is a scare tactic, not an argument

Retirees already use healthcare. Everyone knows this. Yet despite being in the same “pool,” the City and unions have repeatedly sought to extract savings from retirees anyway, even though they are on fixed incomes. Retirees were low-hanging fruit and since retirees don’t vote on contracts and few unions allow retirees to vote in union elections or even have a retiree association, they had nothing to lose. Even the UFT underestimated the power of their own retiree population to unseat the long-time incumbent of the RTC and the numbers show the president’s winning margins were getting thinner over time.

The claim that retirees are safe only so long as they remain indistinguishable from active workers ignores reality. The pressure to reduce retiree costs has existed — and been acted upon — precisely while retirees were allegedly part of the union framework. I mean, at least according to Leo, they were in the union, right? So why were they harmed, and this kept secret? That is one of the foundational arguments in Chemical Worker’s vs Pittsburg Plate Glass because active members have different fundamental needs than an in-service worker. Just as a union today has multiple titles in one union and does not provide equity among them, but enriches one over the other - that would happen to retirees too. Yesterday’s union never imagined there would be a situation that the union would “sell retirees down the river.” Enter 2014..2018..2021..2022..2023..

Below: Justice Brennan, Jr. and Mortimer Reimer - Union attorney.

The danger to retirees has never been independence. It has been lack of leverage combined with misplaced trust. That has changed, and why it makes Leo so angry. Our retirees organization is relevant, fact checks, even our former unions, the MLC, we organized, we educated and we have transparency and we answer all questions publicly. No union nor the MLC does that. And we back up what we say. People like Leo hate that because it exposes all the big lies. Its okay - because we have a new era of retiree - and we are savvy to all the BS now. We see them. They hate that. And, they can’t keep misrepresenting the truth anymore or using you.

MLC testified at City Council that they couldn’t tell the retirees that they were changing their healthcare because DeBlasio wouldn’t let them. I remind you, healthcare for active workers must be jointly negotiated between the City and unions as per the 1992 MLC agreement. The MLC knew this because they sued Bloomberg for trying to initiate an RFP to replace their plan in 2014 without their knowledge, and a Court determined Bloomberg violated their agreements.

The language of the 1992 agreement states:

That means the UNIONS - not the MLC - shall jointly participate because it is the UNIONS that hold a bargaining certificate and not the MLC. Remember that! Unions can negotiate together as a coalition, like the uniformed coalition for example or not. It is voluntary, not mandatory. Any party can walk away at any time and it has been done.

Benefits are not bargaining power

Leo points to SHIP and other UFT retiree benefits as evidence of protection. These are optional benefit programs, not collective bargaining rights. And these benefits are tied to “union dues” kind of like AARP makes its money off selling Medicare Advantage plans. It keeps retirees connected even if they don’t want to be because they fear losing the optional insurance.

SHIP now costs retirees $20 per month. It reimburses expenses only if retirees incur costs and file tedious claims. Similar coverage strategies exist outside the union. Legal services, discounts, classes, and counseling are valuable — but they are transactional benefits, not leverage against the City.

Purchasing insurance products does not equal having enforceable rights.

This is not union-busting

Calling for clarity about retirees’ legal status and representation is not an attack on unions. It is a demand for honesty. And there has not been much of that.

Nothing I advocate would:

• Eliminate unions

• Undermine collective bargaining for active workers (ahem… )

• Privatize retiree healthcare (ahem…)

What I am saying is simple: retirees should not be told they are protected by organizations that have repeatedly failed them, nor accused of disloyalty for questioning arrangements that shifted costs onto them without consent and put them in medical debt, made them spend their pensions to fight the organizations’ actions in court when they sided with management and not the retirees. They accused retirees of having fear and anxiety - NO! It was anger and betrayal. And they have done nothing to earn that back when, over the last few years those same unions spent retirees’ political action money and dues lobbying against all legislation that protects retiree healthcare from being diminished in retirement. Think about that. A union…not putting in place a protection that prevents their healthcare from being reduced again. That says they intend to try again and will pass more costs on to retirees, making their life more painful. Because every normal labor leader would like to know that retirees are protected, since they do not negotiate for current retirees, only employees who will be future retirees.

Retirees deserve an honest conversation

Rather than speculating about motives or invoking worst-case political hypotheticals, we should be asking straightforward questions:

• What rights do retirees actually have?

• Who speaks for retirees — and how are they held accountable?

• What safeguards exist when retiree interests conflict with active worker priorities in that same ‘pool’?

• Why were retirees excluded from decisions that directly affected them?

Fear-based rhetoric cannot substitute for answers.

Retirees are not trying to “pave over paradise.” We are asking not to be told, after the fact, that the parking lot was always for our own good and threw our peers into the asphalt for the greater good.

The real risk is not retirees thinking independently.
The real risk is continuing to pretend we are protected by that former union leadership when experience shows otherwise. If they want to change that, they have the power to work with us. Lord knows we have asked them to do just that and have been dismissed repeatedly. They have another ask - let’s see how they address that if they are truly interested in fiercely defending retirees. Because in this climate, the last thing we need is another entity to use us to advocate for something we don’t benefit from. Don’t tell me you love me, show me.