People Who Think They Know Everything Don't Bother With Due Diligence
Teachers walk on eggshells. Mulgrew and Unity drop bowling balls off of tall buildings.
After UFT Unity got its ass kicked, in concurrent elections, by both retirees and paraprofessionals, Unity’s Mulgrew sent a couple of emails. He told Medicare-eligible retirees he no longer supported the Advantage plan. He told everyone the city’s new cheaper health plan would have premiums, so he didn’t support that either.
All of Unity’s Very Smart People thought those emails would turn the tide. Members would say yeah, that’s good enough for me. They wouldn’t examine anything any further.
Unity did nothing to protect our health care.
After all, who cares if Mulgrew is actively supporting two lawsuits designed to dump people into Advantage plans? Who cares if Mulgrew specifically agreed to premiums, in writing? Retirees, they figure, are too old to notice. In-service members, they determine, are too stupid to notice.
Why else would they do this? Just recently, Mulgrew (or someone who wrote and signed his name) sent us an email about Anthem’s failure to come to an agreement with Memorial Sloan Kettering. Now first, if that is not in itself an excellent argument against using private insurance like Medicare Advantage, I don’t know what is. Medicare works just about everywhere. We don’t have to worry about important hospitals rejecting us.
Unity misled retirees about Municipal Sloan Kettering.
We all know Medicare’s reach, yet Mulgrew misrepresented the situation. He wrote, and I quote:
MSK may start mailing letters to all current patients with Anthem coverage (GHI-CBP, GHI Senior Care and all other Anthem NYC health plans) notifying them that MSK facilities may become out-of-network on Jan. 1, 2025, if they are unable to reach an agreement.
Note that he and Unity’s Very Smart People specifically stated that GHI Senior Care was included in this. That didn’t make any sense to me, and it didn’t make any sense to Marianne Pizzitola either. Why would a supplemental insurance plan, paying a fraction of costs, need agreements, and how, in fact, could they haven negotiated them with every hospital all across this vast country? We both called Anthem and were both told it did not affect us.
UFT finally put out a fact sheet, finally, confirming that, in these words:
Will Medicare-eligible retirees be affected?
Initially, Anthem informed us that all of their health care plans, both public and private, would be affected by failed negotiations; however, it has since updated that statement to say that Medicare-eligible retirees will not be affected by this change.
All due respect, I don’t believe that. Why would a phone rep on Anthem who responded to me know something that they would tell me, but not reps from UFT? More importantly, why wouldn’t our reps know what I did—that GHI Senior Care is a supplemental program, that it is secondary to whatever we use Medicare for, and that it’s thoroughly implausible they’d hold contracts with hospitals all across the nation?
Medicare is a national plan. That’s just one thing that makes it superior to any Advantage plan. Someone in UFT Unity didn’t bother with their homework, and as a result scared the bejeezus out of thousands of Medicare-eligible retirees. Do they apologize?
Never.
Meanwhile, as we face three lawsuits designed to A. make NYC retirees pay co-pays on Medicare, B. make us pay thousands of dollars to stay in real Medicare, and C. allow us no option but Medicare Advantage, our leadership, UFT Unity, continues to actively support cases B and C. In these cases, they are fighting against us.
Unity battles, but not for improved health care.
What are they fighting for, you ask? Well, they’ve filed an Article 78 Suit against the city over the teacher-member trustee election that kind of occurred last May. UFT Unity’s candidate, Christine McGrath, won that election, and the DOE didn’t bother with any stinking rules. She defeated Ben Morgenroth, who is non-Unity and would therefore not be subject to Mulgrew’s peculiar negotiating techniques.
Here’s the thing—while Unity is up on its high horse demanding the election be redone, it had no qualms about seating McGrath after the one it now deems invalid. Now sure, you say, but it’s important we have someone on that board, doing that important job. Doubtless Unity will agree with you.
Here’s the thing—when I was a new teacher (back when the Clash was a thing) there was a UFT election, and New Action’s Michael Shulman was elected Vice President for High Schools. I voted for him. It was the first time I’d voted in a union election. Shulman won, but UFT insisted on a redo. Meanwhile, Shulman was prevented from taking the office.
Unity has flexible standards.
So here’s how it works—in an election Unity deems unacceptable, if they win, their candidate takes the seat. If they lose, their opponent does not take the seat. That sounds fair, doesn’t it? Unity forced a new election, Shulman won by a higher margin, and they finally let him take his seat.
Oh, and no opposition member has ever become High School VP again. That’s because they changed the rules, allowing elementary and middle school teachers, more reliable Unity voters, help us choose. This is like the GOP having Oklahoma and Texas help New York choose a Governor.
That’s the Unity way. We do Whatever We Want, Whenever We Want, However We Want. You keep voting for us, forever, and hope we don’t just take your health insurance away forever.
They think we’re too stupid to notice.
There’s only one way to prove them wrong, and we can do it next May.
Thanks to Daniel A.
Thank you for this article and your untiring refusal to sit back and let misrepresentation by Unity go unrefuted. I also like how the drawing of Mulgrew shows his superior disdain for others, usually hidden beneath a veneer of "humility." As Debs once said, a union is most hurt by the treachery of those within it. In building his empire, Mulgrew has divided people instead of making for Solidarity.
Keep crushing them Arthur! Lack of due diligence is bad enough, but, with all the underhanded ways Mulgrew and his Smart People STILL hope to railroad us and privatize traditional Medicare, it's not farfetched to see it as a deliberate choice to include GHI Senior Care in that initial email we received -that listed health coverages Unity felt we should see as impacted by the outcome of this MSK-Anthem battle. And you said it Arthur! -What an argument on behalf of traditional Medicare -which I also believe Mulgrew and his Team hoped to hide! If every member gets why GHI Senior Care is the ONLY plan to remain above this negotiation fray, Mulgrew's Big$ vision of health care would surely sink. The May 2025 UFT General Elections are not as distant as some think. Unity must be kicked out! So let's keep sharing these fine articles!