Revisionist = Unity Revises History to Sell Itself and Claims OUR Victories as Theirs
Shocking I know. I was sent an image that Unity claims it protected Retiree healthcare. I laughed so hard I fell from my chair.
No silly Unity, NYC Retirees organized and incorporated like a union to fight back the UFT and DC37 literally stealing from those NOT IN THEIR UNION to fund raises and win contracts. Talk about anti-labor. Sheeesh!
Unity Sheep like Leo Casey think he’s fighting the good fight because he’s fighting the Elon Musk/Trump junta when he’s ignoring the fight right under his nose in 10007 and that’s a fight more easily won.
He thinks the Medicare Advantage fight is over. It is not.
He thinks the attacks on retirees are over. They are not.
Who started that pattern? The all-of-a-sudden hater of pattern bargaining, Michael Mulgrew himself. In 2014, documents show he financed his contract leveraging all the 102 unions in the Municipal Labor Committee into a never-ending broad schmear of healthcare givebacks so treacherous - he ignored all the uniformed unions telling him they wanted no part of it and today where did it leave him and those 102 unions?
The leaders of those unions do not speak with him and they are now in court over those givebacks because the City is saying it did not realize the savings Mulgrew and Garrido committed to and the City wants its money and demands arbitration. The unions say they don’t owe the City any money and refuse arbitration because they believe they committed to mediation with their hand picked $7500/day mediator, Martin Scheinman.
Let’s break all that down, so you know why the entire labor force hates Michael Mulgrew today and would love nothing more than to see him move on.
As one of the largest unions in the City, with the largest vote in the Municipal Labor Committee, Mulgrew holds a lot of power. He wielded it in part by manipulation.
The MLC does not have a bargaining certificate and they have no legal requirement to “bargain” with the City of NY. This alleged right appears NO WHERE in the founding documents or the legislation that created this body. It was created to fund and staff the labor seats and half the neutrals on the Office of Collective Bargaining Board - a job they had been completely derelict in for years because they were paying Alan Klinger of Stroock & Stroock (and now Steptoe since the previous firm went bankrupt) millions of dollars. You would never know this the way Mulgrew spoke to union leaders in 2014 - literally telling them they HAD TO vote on the deal before them so he could get his contract. They did not have to.
I asked him to make the process more democratic, he literally said to me in front of my friends, “ Why would I do that Marianne? Give up all my power?” Maybe because you are a union president and not an oligarch that should be able to steal from other union members and retirees to fund your contracts..
There were GRAVE concerns from several of the unions that he was financing his contract on “savings” ALL unions had to commit to. Because he has the highest vote in the MLC, he was able to force these changes on everyone. I asked Henry Garrido why he allowed Mulgrew to do this and he told me that Mulgrew said he went along with it, he would agree to tiering hospitals for his next agreement. What does that mean? That all HHC hospitals would have no copay and everyone else a high copay and two most expensive hospitals NYU and Presbyterian, an even higher copay.
I asked what happened since that was not implemented and he told us that Mulgrew walked back his promise - that there was no HHC hospital in Staten Island and he would not want to pay every time he needed a hospital.
Tiering hospital copays is being gamed right now for all in service workers. But it is not the hospitals that suffer…it is YOU - who has to go to the hospital who pays.
For example, for several years they failed to install Labor Chairs and neutrals to staff the board until recently and only did that because we filed an improper practice against the MLC, UFT and DC37. Then what did they do? Stack the MLC with Alan Klinger and Harry Greenberg, both lawyers for the MLC.
Look at these documents below. They show how Mulgrew was financing his 2014 MLC deal literally on our backs. You think you got a raise, but you paid for it in copays, deductibles, narrowed networks and prior authorization denying you care. COST SHARING = MEAN YOU ARE PAYING… and that is called a “savings” to City.
Cost savings due to “higher cost sharing” only means if you could not afford to pay the increased copays, you chose to suffer and not get the care you need. That is not what our union should be doing to us. You “saved” the city - at the expense of our health.
Claire Levitt said it best in her sadistic way…. “behavioral economics techniques”
So when Mulgrew says you have “High Quality Premium Free Healthcare” - YOU DO NOT. YOU… my dear city worker, have a plan suppressed by his own hand, and YOU are paying back door premiums in the form of copays and deductibles. WATCH! Because more are coming, he just didn’t want you to know before his election.
In the MLC, Mulgrew has such tremendous voting power, that the decisions he makes affects not just UFT members, BUT EVERY CITY WORKER AND RETIREE AND THEIR FAMILY. What he does affects us all! If it didn’t, he never would have bene able to push Medicare Advantage on us that he cooked up with Artie Pepper, the copays on us all including for the FIRST TIME IN 60 YEARS low income retirees on Medicare - and diminishing your choices of plans. HE DID THAT.
He put these copays for urgent cares on ALL WORKERS. It is not the Urgent Care who suffers, it is YOU! Especially is you are closest to that one! Copays penalize YOU for using your healthcare.
Mulgrew can’t say our healthcare is “High Quality - Premium Free" when he tried to charge retirees premium for a plan they had since the INCEPTION of Medicare!
MICHAEL MULGREW IMPLEMENTED PREMIUM AND COPAYS ON THE ELDERLY AND DISABLED TO FINANCE YOUNG WORKERS RAISES AND KEEP THEIR INSURANCE PREMIUM FREE.
When Unity Flying Monkeys ask why so many people are so concerned about the UFT election, it is because Mulgrew chose to make decisions and abuse his power to steal healthcare from other unions who also have the same mandatory subject of bargaining he did - but MULGREW chose to leverage them to finance that 2014 contract to pay for raises. HE made us concerned about what he was doing because he interfered with our earned vested benefits for his own purpose.
He not only tried to force us into the default plan of Project 2025, he passed copays on the most vulnerable low income retirees for the first time in 60 years to FUND HIS CONTRACTS. And did it a second time in 2025, that they are amounting to a car payment to this population. NO ONE IN LABOR HISTORY IN NYC DID THIS.
MICHAEL MULGREW DID IN 2014 Causing the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund to implode, caused the retirees to fund litigation for 4 years and counting, file 3 lawsuits, and now they are suing the City because they allege the MLC deals didn’t bring the savings they committed to.
Anyone supporting Michael Mulgrew for re-election - you have a guy that was what? A shop teacher? English teacher? Never negotiated contracts or had an inch of labor history or labor law under him… negotiated his very first contracts literally on the backs of other unions and retirees and families citywide of those not ever attached to the UFT - TO PAY FOR HIS RAISES. Yeah. Let’s do that again….
The only reason retirees organized like the true unionists we were taught to be, is because HE created us when HE stole our earned Medicare Benefits. Then, he made every retiree, worker, child, widow, 9/11 responder/survivor, and line of duty surviving spouse aware of who HE was and what HE was doing to steal from us. And we chose to organize and fight back…. and fight HIM. If he was really against Medicare Advantage, or stealing from retirees and their families, he would have supported Intro 1096 because it does NOT touch collective bargaining and he would NOT HAVE DIRECTED the NYSAFLCIO to kill our state bill.
The real reason he doesn’t want the bills to pass, because if they do - he can no longer pass back door premiums in the form of copays and deductibles on us to fund his raises. WE ARE SHUTTING OUR POCKETBOOKS WITH OR WITHOUT HIM.
Real labor leaders never did what Mulgrew did. Medicare Advantage is NOT Medicare, and it is NOT an advantage. And copays penalize people for using their healthcare - and doing that to the elderly and disabled is criminal.
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What a terrific article!
Do you think this is why Mulgrew pushed through a resolution to bar voices from non-UFT members?