The Summer of Our Discontent

UFT Unity and Eric Adams spout happy talk, do nothing.

Not much happens in the summer, in terms of education. Teachers are getting much-needed rest after ten months of one of the most stressful and high-stakes jobs there is. Bureaucrats are busy in air-conditioned offices, designing nonsensical mandates we will pretend to follow as soon as we have to.

But anyone ready to teach has to be ready to learn as well. This summer has taught us a lot. Spring brought winds of change, exiling Tom Murphy and UFT Unity from leadership of our Retired Teacher Chapter. Retiree Advocate won that, and I won the position of Vice Chair.

While I’m honored to be chosen, I learned that my title is just that, and doesn’t carry any actual responsibilities. Paid jobs in the UFT are still held by Unity members, and are dispensed on the basis of loyalty, not ability. If we want to change that, indeed if we want to change anything substantive in our union, we need to win the general election next May.

Late last June, when the election results came out and Unity lost both the RTC and paraprofessionals by a landslide, Michael Mulgrew stepped down from his pedestal and said he no longer supported dumping retirees into Medicare Advantage. Mayor Eric Adams met with a group of senior citizens and talked the talk. He said he sympathized with us and blamed our union for the situation.

Adams said the city is losing 50 million dollars a month as a result of this. This is not really true. The city is not losing anything. They’re just not reaping the benefits of the idiotic deal Unity’s Mulgrew made to plunder retiree health care so rank and file can get a raise.

Let me ask you something—do you think it’s a good idea to give up 600 million a year, forever, in exchange for a three year contract that hovers around cost of living? Do you think it’s competent negotiation to give up anything whatsoever for a cost of living contract? And if you do, do you think retirees, who don’t even benefit from the contract, should be required to finance it? Do you think everyone else deserves health care that costs 10% less?

Once you establish bargaining precedents like these, it’s very hard to get back to anywhere reasonable. If you think these negotiations are remotely as insane as I do, you need to help us vote out UFT Unity.

Now let’s look at where we stand with UFT Unity and Eric Adams, both up for re-election next year.

I’ve never been a fan of Eric Adams. He was a Republican, but now he’s a Democrat. I think, like Michael Bloomberg, he affiliates with whatever party is handy to get him elected, and then serves himself. Case in point—even as he gave us pretty words about how he sympathized with us, he was actively appealing thress lawsuits aiming to protect our health care.

Sorry Mayor Adams, but that makes you our enemy. We are not fools, and we are not fooled.

Let’s now look at Unity’s Mulgrew. It’s nice that Mulgrew said he no longer supported dumping us into an advantage plan, but nice is one of those weasel words.

Nice haircut.

Your sister is nice.

Your dog is nice.

I mean, there it is. It means something different each time. It’s not precisely high praise. The word is so overused and imprecise, it can border on meaningless.

For example, even as Mulgrew pays lip service to opposing Medicare, he’s failed to take any action to help us. Not only that, but Mulgrew’s got a key voice in the Municipal Labor Committee.

There are three cases that NYC Retirees are currently embroiled in. One involves the Mulgrew Tax, the copays we will be compelled to pay under GHI Senior Care beginning in January. Mike Mulgrew loves to lecture about the slippery slope of health premiums. Once they’re in, they can go up, and who knows by how much? He’s right, of course. But every city employee knows the exact same can be said about co-pays, which have exploded in recent years.

There’s a case called Campion, and it’s about how Administrative Code 12-126 is interpreted. Despite the City Council’s ruling that 12-126 precluded the city from extorting us to remain in real Medicare, the city is appealing. Rather than comply, the city, along with MLC, manipulated rates so we appear to merit almost nothing. The MLC then filed an amicus brief in support of the city’s attempt to make us pay. This means that our own union leadership, as part of MLC, is working against us. UFT Unity and Michael Mulgrew are working against our interests. They are anti-union.

There’s another case called Bentkowski. This is the big one, for us. This is the one in which Eric Adams wants to dump us all into Medicare Advantage, with no recourse but to forgo all our city health benefits. Should they succeed, that would be that. It wouldn’t matter that multiple judges ruled this would cause us irreparable harm. And guess what? MLC has filed an amicus brief in support of that too. Our union leadership smiles to our faces as they stab us in the back.

If you’re rank and file, or a retiree under 65, the MLC has a agreed to a new plan for you that will cost Eric Adams 10% less. This could mean premiums, more co-pays, tiered care or worse. Unity’s Mulgrew says he now opposes it, but you’ve just seen what that’s worth.

UFT Unity is our affliction. And we can’t be cured with half-measures. This particular affliction needs to be surgically corrected. We need to remove them from our body, no matter how painful it may be to some of them. They may find it cruel and unusual punishment to have to enter schools and, you know, work, but we can no longer afford their peculiar negotiating style.

It’s time we labeled them not only ineffective, but downright adversarial.

Come election time, they need to go. All of them.