The Good Ship Unity

It was unsinkable, they said.

Ever since the inception of the United Federation of Teachers, we’ve been dominated by the Unity Caucus. They were, seemingly, unstoppable. No one could challenge them, and they controlled every lever of power. At first, they were activists. Teachers didn’t have collective bargaining. It was necessary, and they walked for it.

I came in decades later. For a long time, like a lot of my fellow teachers (I’d venture the overwhelming majority these days), I took union for granted. It didn’t mean much. It was just there. But I got the sense, at meetings, that UFT would fight for me if I were in trouble. In 2005, I started a blog to give a voice contrary to those of the tabloids, and even the Times, who trash-talked us. I wanted to stand up for our union.

Something happened that year, though. There was a new contract. It was full of outrageous concessions to the city. There was extra time. How was that a good idea when very recent history showed could get zero-percent raises and end up working it for free? Teachers would patrol halls and bathrooms every day. You couldn’t appeal letters to file. There was more, and I wrote about it extensively.

All of a sudden I wasn’t feeling like union leaders were standing up for me. But it didn’t matter much. The only seats ever in play were those on the high school executive board, a handful that were outvoted whenever Unity saw fit. In fact, when the high school teachers mustered the temerity to elect a non-Unity HS Vice President, they changed the rules, allowing elementary and middle school teachers to vote on our VP as well.

That was tantamount to having Texas and Oklahoma help NY select a governor. It was done specifically to avoid democracy, to make sure high school teachers were never allowed to select their own leader. This tells you a lot about what Unity has devolved into.

Not only that, but UFT gave retirees both membership and a vote on leadership. While I’m glad about that right now, it’s pretty clear to me that Unity did this because they could always rely on a huge majority of retiree votes, just in case those uppity teachers ever decided to go a different way. I’ll bet you dimes to dollars Michael Mulgrew now wishes his predecessors had not gone that way.

A few years back, Mulgrew decided to screw the retirees. Why not? They’re always a reliable vote. Perhaps he consulted with the “very smart people” to whom he loves to refer, and they decided what the hell, the retirees will go for whatever as long as they gave them occasional fancy luncheons at the Hilton for fifty bucks a pop.

We’ll dump them all into an Advantage plan. We’ll insist that all the doctors they have will join it. Who cares if it’s true or not? We’ll tell them it’s just as good or better. When they bitch about the pre-approvals, we’ll insist they’ll be reviewed by our “very smart people.”

Not only that, but this will create yet another level of bureaucracy and a whole lot of patronage gigs for Unity members. It’s a WIN-WIN, the great minds declared, and they sold us out for a contract that maybe kept up with inflation, a contract that had no benefits whatsoever for retirees..

Well, they miscalculated.

Retirees are outraged. Over the last two years, when I was still working full-time, they started approaching me, telling me this is absolutely unacceptable. Retirees who were never involved in union were incensed. I was surprised. As I learned more about what Medicare was, about what “Advantage” was, and about what Aetna was, I came around to learn and see they were absolutely right.

There’s a good reason why the hacks who write propaganda for Unity hate Marianne Pizzitola and the NYC Retirees. In multiple lawsuits, we’ve taken the city to court and blocked not only the Advantage scheme, but also Mulgrew’s attempt to illegally impose co-pays on retirees who used GHI Senior Care. Said co-pays were likely imposed to make retirees think Aetna was relatively not so bad.

Mulgrew and his thugs persuaded no one.

Unity can’t argue persuasively that the Advantage plan is better than real Medicare. While they may deem retirees dotty enough to believe that Joe Namath-style benefits will make up for denied heart surgery, the fact is no one off their payroll buys this nonsense. It’s doubtful anyone on payroll believes it either. To underline that, when they were trying to change 12-126, they lined up a bunch of Unity members to publicly state that Advantage was not good enough for them.

If it’s not good enough for the privileged and elite Unity Caucus members, why the hell is it good enough for you and me? And why is it good enough for the multitude of city employees, including UFT members, who wouldn’t be able to afford the surcharges they wanted to impose for staying in real Medicare?

Now Unity attacks Marianne personally, because they have no real counter for her arguments. Their junior high school logic persuades no one not on payroll, and they’re about to face a devastating loss. Retiree Advocate is going to win this election, and Unity has no idea what to do about that. Without any actual ideas, they will surely demand a re-do when we win. That will only make us win bigger, adding to their humiliation.

Not only that, but losing this election will give opposition legs in next year’s general leadership election. They brought this upon themselves. Retirees are not the bunch of happy-go-lucky shuffleboard enthusiasts the sterotype-loving Unity hacks took us for. Retirees appreciate the benefits we’ve earned and won’t give them up without a fight, and a dozen more fights, and a dozen more after that.

Unity is ruined. Their best move would be to give up the ghost, make a large donation to NYC Retirees, and stop badmouthing Marianne and those of us fighting to preserve our benefits. But Mulgrew and his “very smart people” can never admit they’re wrong. Therefore, they need to dig in, hurl juvenile insults, and stay on that Good Ship Unity right until it sinks into the sea.

They made the biggest mistake of their careers screwing with the retirees. They will lose the retiree election, they will lose the general election, and a whole lot of the “very smart people” are going to have to go out and get real jobs.

I hope they perform better at those jobs than their current ones. I was chapter leader of a very large school for 12 years, and I can tell you that non-Unity bosses have little tolerance for those asleep at the switch, in the classroom, or pretty much anywhere else.