Is This Really About Retiree Healthcare or About Who Gets to Challenge Unity?

Protecting Retirees Shouldn’t Require Choosing Sides

If Retiree Healthcare is the main issue, why I am the focus of Nick Bacon?

Nick Bacon’s piece deserves a response, not because NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees needs to defend its independence, but because his argument appears to conflate two entirely different questions:

Should the UFT formally affiliate with NYCOPSR?

and

Should UFT members or opposition caucuses be free to work with an independent retiree organization on issues where they share common goals?

Those are not the same question.

No one is asking the UFT to surrender its independence to NYCOPSR. No one is asking NYCOPSR to become part of the UFT. And no one is asking the UFT to finance projects we undertake. Or any project, as a matter of fact. So we do not know why he is raising those points.

NYCOPSR is an independent retiree organization. That independence is precisely what allows us to challenge decisions made by the City and the Municipal Labor Committee when we believe those decisions harm retirees. We only exist because of failed union leadership diminishing earned and vested retiree healthcare in the first place. If those leaders protected what a retiree earned in the first place, we would not be here.

So if Nick’s argument is simply that the UFT should remain institutionally independent from NYCOPSR, there is no disagreement. We are independent, and we intend to remain that way. You need no more proof of just how important that is, other than how the RTC has been treated like an illegitimate child of its own former union, the UFT. Leadership does not respect the chapter or the leadership, and demands blind loyalty still.

But that doesn’t explain why UFT opposition groups should be discouraged from working with together. And that distinction becomes particularly important given the current discussion among UFT opposition groups about whether they should work together to challenge Unity leadership.

If opposition candidates decide that they don’t want to work with NYCOPSR, that is their political choice. But it is very different from arguing that working with NYCOPSR somehow makes an opposition slate legally dangerous, politically compromised, or incapable of representing UFT members. That is where Nick’s argument begins to fall apart.

The $600 million argument is a false one. Nick argues that because the MLC agreed to pursue healthcare savings, including the projected Medicare Advantage savings, the UFT could expose itself to liability by supporting efforts that prevent those savings. This is presented as though retirees and NYCOPSR created the problem. We didn’t. It was the leadership of the UFT that negotiated a contract predicated on “savings” on the backs of other workers and retirees. Go back to how this began, and you have the original crime. Nick doesn’t hold leadership accountable to that error, but the retirees who stopped the error of their ways. Sure, let’s blame the victim. (insert royal eyeroll).

The City and MLC negotiated an arrangement in which hundreds of thousands of Medicare-eligible retirees would be moved into Medicare Advantage, with projected savings of approximately $600 million annually. NYCOPSR challenged that plan in court. The courts did not invent the City’s healthcare obligations. They interpreted a long standing law these retirees helped pass decades ago. We sought to protect what we earned and paid for. And yet for some reason Nick wants you to believe because the leadership of his union declared a “savings” must be found to finance his next raise, and that leader chose to do it by changing the healthcare benefits current retirees were promised, earned and relied on for decades, we should not challenge the holy almighty UFT president, because they might be held liable if the deal doesn’t come to fruition. Maybe dear Nick, that was not a deal they should have made!

FLAG on the play! The UFT not only violated the law, they violated the tenets of the union – which was to protect what a retired unionist earned. If the UFT wants Nick to have a raise, and he should – they should fund it on their own, not on retirees who are not in the union any longer.

In NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees v. Campion, the New York Court of Appeals held that Administrative Code §12-126 required the City, to pay up to the statutory cap for each plan it offers. That wasn’t an act of political sabotage. It was a judicial interpretation of a law governing the City’s healthcare obligations. And there is another important fact: the UFT itself ultimately withdrew its support for the Medicare Advantage implementation in June 2024. That didn’t happen by accident.

So it is difficult to argue that the UFT is permanently bound to defend a healthcare strategy simply because the MLC once agreed to pursue it. (And it was at the UFT urging, of course). If Nick believes that formal UFT participation in retiree litigation would create specific contractual liability, he should identify the provision of the agreement that creates that liability. Saying that it “could” create liability is not the same thing as demonstrating that it would. And remember again, the UFT made the deal. Retirees did not. The UFT/MLC erred, and OLR encouraged this violation of retirees because they would get what they wanted and used the UFT and DC37 to do it.

Intro 1008 does not pit retirees against active workers. Nick also suggests that protecting retirees without finding additional funding necessarily puts active employees on the losing side of a zero-sum game. That is an assumption, not a fact. Intro 1008 does not require active employees to give up wages or healthcare benefits to pay for retirees. It does not prohibit collective bargaining. It does not prevent unions from negotiating future retirement benefits. Yet the UFT president acknowledged on three separate occasions that he wants the copays he implemented to stay, because they partially fund raises. For the first time in 60 years - a union said the quiet part out loud - and defended putting low income, elderly and disabled in harms way. I guess that is the new “socialism” in the UFT? Retirees have pension dollars - we need a raise. Let’s charge them every time they go to the Doctor to fund that initiative! We will blame it on the high cost of healthcare!

In fact, the legislation expressly preserves employee organizations’ ability to negotiate the terms and conditions of employment, including future retirement benefits. The bill establishes a floor for retiree healthcare protections. A floor in place for over 60 years. It does not create a war between active employees and retirees. The UFT did that. The suggestion that retirees can only be protected by sacrificing active workers is precisely the false choice that needs to be rejected. Retirees are not the enemy of active employees. And active employees are not the enemy of retirees. A union should be capable of fighting for both.

Nick says I supported protecting current retirees while leaving future retirees behind. Again, that characterization doesn’t accurately describe Intro 1008. The legislation protects retirees while specifically preserving the right of employee organizations to negotiate future retirement benefits. If I advocated for active workers, the UFT leadership would suffer from a worse case of ‘Marianne Derangement Syndrome.’ We have been trying to get the UFT to fix the State law that the UFT passed in 2002 that was reinterpreted by the Actuary and cut para pensions in half. The UFT has been silent. Want to see them have a cow? Hold my beer… that is coming since they refuse to help even their own. If the UFT cannot start talks to amend a state law that cut Para pensions, and they KNEW this since early 2026, what makes you think they will protect a bill that preserves retirees’ healthcare benefits retirees earned? Especially when that same leadership initiated the mess we are all in today? They should align on fixing it - but in his mind, that means he must have made a mistake he refuses to face.

There is an important policy debate to be had about future retirees. But that debate should happen at the bargaining table, not by allowing the healthcare protections of people who are already retired to be diminished. Nick has a union with a bargaining certificate and collective bargaining rights. Retirees do not – and unions have a responsibility to protect that, not sell it off at a garage sale. That was their failure. SO desperate for a contract, UFT raises were predicated on the MLC agreeing to healthcare savings. The MLC was told “it had to do this.” The UFT membership approved that contract and never looked under the covers.

It is perfectly reasonable to establish a statutory floor for people who have already retired while allowing unions to negotiate the terms applicable to future retirees. Those concepts are not contradictory.

The Paladino argument is another reason why they do so poorly in the polls. Nick also cites Council Member Vickie Paladino as an example of why working with people who support retiree healthcare can create political problems because she has criticized the UFT and has opposing political views. This argument essentially says that because someone disagrees with the UFT on an issue, cooperation with that person on another issue is politically unacceptable. That is not how coalitions work. The MLC is a coalition by the way. And they surely do not always agree on everything. And they do not have to.

People can disagree about education, labor leadership, union politics, candidates, or virtually anything else and still agree that retirees should not lose earned healthcare protections. Intro 1008 itself demonstrates this. Its Council support crosses political and ideological lines. If every potential ally had to agree with the UFT on every issue before the UFT could work with them, there would be very few allies left.

And then there is the question Nick doesn’t answer, the big one..

Nick spends considerable time explaining why the UFT shouldn’t formally partner with NYCOPSR. But who is actually proposing that? If the current question is whether different UFT opposition groups should work together, why is NYCOPSR being presented as the obstacle? If Daniel Alicea, Arthur Goldstein, or others want to work with NYCOPSR on retiree healthcare, that does not mean NYCOPSR controls their slate. It doesn’t mean they surrender their independence. It doesn’t mean they agree with us on every issue. We do not. It means they recognize that on one important issue, protecting retiree healthcare, they share common ground. That is called coalition politics. We align on what we agree with, and not where we don’t.

And if someone believes that working with NYCOPSR should disqualify an opposition group from participating in a broader UFT coalition, then they should simply say that directly. Don’t disguise a political decision as a legal necessity. Independence is not hostility! Perhaps the most revealing sentence in Nick’s article is his conclusion that NYCOPSR’s effectiveness comes from its independence. He’s right. Our independence is precisely why we can challenge the City, the MLC, and union leadership when necessary. But independence does not require hostility. The UFT doesn’t need to become NYCOPSR. And NYCOPSR certainly doesn’t need to become the UFT. We can remain completely separate organizations and still agree on legislation. We can disagree on political strategy and still cooperate on a particular issue. We can criticize union leadership and still believe deeply in the value of unions. And we can work with people who disagree with us on other issues without surrendering our principles.

So what is this really about Nick? This is where Nick’s article raises a larger question. If the current discussion among UFT opposition groups is whether they should unite to challenge Unity leadership, then the relevant question is not:

“Can the UFT work with Marianne Pizzitola?” Because they can.

The relevant question is:

“Can UFT opposition groups work together when they share a common goal, even if one of those groups also works with an independent retiree organization that happens to have successfully protected retirees’ healthcare for 5 years that the UFT diminished in the first place and put them in a tailspin with financially crippling copays?”

Those are very different questions.

And if the answer is no, then I think UFT members deserve to know why. Because if NYCOPSR is merely the reason given for refusing to work together, then the debate isn’t really about retiree healthcare. It is about political alignment. That is perfectly legitimate, but it should be presented honestly as such. I have never asked anyone to agree with me on everything. I have never asked an opposition caucus to surrender its identity to NYCOPSR. And I certainly don’t expect UFT candidates to stop advocating for their own members simply because they work with retirees.

What I do expect is that people who claim to be challenging the status quo will judge ideas on their merits not reject an ally because of who else that ally works with. The irony is that Nick’s own conclusion makes the strongest case for keeping NYCOPSR independent.

Our effectiveness comes from being independent. So let us remain independent. Let the UFT remain independent. Let UFT opposition groups remain independent. And then let everyone decide, issue by issue, whether they are willing to stand together.

That is not a threat to union democracy. That is union democracy.

Nick should tell Harriet why she has to eat cereal and fears going to the doctor because of the copays on her $1189 a month pension, while UFT caucuses choose not to help NYCOPSR pass a law that could help her, over ‘politics.’