Are We Union?

I hear both sides.

Retirement is an interesting phase of life. Most of my life I’ve been a musician (albeit not the sort of musician who makes a living). But since I’ve retired, I’ve spent a lot of time playing the fiddle. Most folks I know don’t love the kind of music I do, but I’m retired, so what the hell do I care? I also work part time and write a little.

My friend Marianne has devoted her recent life to protecting the lot of retirees. She formed an organization that successfully challenged city union bosses when they advocated for the city as opposed to working people (us). She prevented them from dumping retirees into an inferior Medicare Advantage plan. In her spare time she scours YouTube to find ways to fix her dryer and water heater, bakes, and works on her classic VW van.

Now it’s different, of course, if you spent your whole life as a Unity Patronage Cult recipient. After raking in tons more cash than any working teacher, you might get another assignment. One of our Unity friends has been assigned full-time to Marianne Character Assassination. He’s unleashed a full-time charm offensive. This entails focusing his ponderous purple prose on three key tactics—innuendo, logical fallacy, and bullshit.

A recent attack on Marianne was all about her contention that retirees are not union members. Our Unity friend pointed out that we have union cards, go to meetings and vote. That’s all true, but there are other things to consider. Marianne and I discussed this, and I fell somewhere in between. Kindly consider the following.

We have votes, but they don’t carry the same weight as those of active members.

If I recall correctly, retirees get up to 23,000 votes in UFT officer elections. That doesn’t mean only the first 23K votes are counted. It means that once 23K retiree votes come in, each vote is counted less and less. For example, if 46,000 retirees vote, each vote counts as half. So you get a voice, but it’s sorely limited.

Retirees get no vote on agreements.

This is very important. Despite the fact we have no say on agreements, disingenuous demagogues like Michael Mulgrew have no issue making deals that involve us. Nor has he any problem lying to our faces about them. For example, he told us repeatedly that every doctor who took Medicare would take his MA scheme. Doctors told members that was not true. One of many reasons I support 1096 is that it would take our health insurance out of Mulgrew’s hands.

We can pay double dues, but still have no rights.

You read that right. I see a lot of fellow retirees working as subs at Francis Lewis High School. I work there as an F-status teacher. Unity hacks are free to lecture us that we’re union members, but that doesn’t matter. UFT deducts additional dues from our checks every time we go to work. In fact, they’ll keep doing so right until we pay the same dues our full-time brother and sister unionists do.

Here’s the thing, though—our jobs are not the same at all. As a full-time teacher, I was able to earn tenure. That meant no matter what kind of pain in the ass I was (and I was a pretty big one), the principal couldn’t fire me without cause. Also I didn’t have to punch in and out every day. In my current position, the principal can fire me any golly gosh darn time she sees fit. I can call UFT, and if I’m lucky enough to get through the Salesforce firewall, some Unity hack, paid with my dues, will tell me why there’s nothing they can do.

We receive no compensation increases.

There is a COLA, but it’s crapola. It will not help you if you’re struggling to make ends meet. If Michael Mulgrew, or whatever Unity hack follows him, determines hey, it’s time to sell out the retirees for a raise again, so we can give a raise to those with full voting rights, there’s not much we can do about it.

In fairness, Unity promised to try and do something about the COLA back in 2007. They even sent it to NYSUT! In 2024, to show they meant business, they made yet another promise at the DA. Oh, and Michael Mulgrew also promises he won’t try to dump us into Medicare Advantage. Again. If you’re comfortable with Unity’s promises, you don’t need to support 1096. Me? He’s lied to me enough. He doesn’t need to fool me twice, let alone 200 times.

We have no prescription insurance.

Well, that’s not necessarily so. Unity offers us the golden opportunity to buy our own insurance. That’s why I pay $360 a month, deducted from my pension, to insure my wife and myself. While that in itself does not indicate we aren’t union, in-service union members get insurance for free.

And while Michael Mulgrew can bully his way up to the podium at our meetings and marvel that other unions don’t show the same love for retirees, other unions give prescription insurance to retirees for free. Firefighters, police, sanitation and DC37 retirees do not pay for prescription insurance.

Tell Unity that our Welfare Fund should cover us, just as other Welfare Funds cover retirees.

Our chapter leader cannot fully advocate for us.

When I was chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School, I knew well that Unity had the emails of every single member in the school. I decided that, I, as the direct representative, needed to have the same. And I collected almost every member email address as first order of business, picking up those of new members on the way.

UFT allows our chapter leader access to email only to write about things Unity endorses. That’s not equitable representation.

Mulgrew shows no respect whatsoever for our elected leader.

At the December RTC meeting, Michael Mulgrew bullied his way up to the stage. He lectured us about why 1096 was a Bad, Bad Thing. He did not like the fact that the resolution I wrote was about to be reaffirmed. He claimed he was there just to wish us a happy holiday, and just happened to bring his lawyer along, to further argue his case.

As usual, Mulgrew spoke As Long As He Liked, and our actual business was neither here nor there. (In that, we don’t differ at all from our in-service colleagues.)

If we are union members, why doesn’t UFT, you know, REPRESENT us?

Just a few days ago, we overwhelmingly expressed support for 1096, again. Yet UFT bosses lobby against it. Isn’t it the job of union to represent members? If we’re members, why on earth do the people whose salaries our dues pay work against us? That’s fundamentally anti-democratic, and fundamentally anti-union.

In any case, you may derive whatever conclusion you wish. That said, to simply state we are union, and behave as though this declaration came down Mt. Sinai with Moses and the Ten Commandments is simplistic at best. No matter how much you protest, if we are union members, we are second-class at best.

That’s why we must create and use our own power. We cannot depend on a self-serving patronage cult, like the Unity Caucus, when we need help. That’s why NYC Retirees exist, and that’s why Unity hacks hate us. And that’s why today I made a donation. (If you’re able, please do so as well.)