UFT Bosses Speak to Us Like We're Children

They take us for ignorant galoots.

In-service members are in for a huge surprise, and not a good one. As soon as they can, UFT boss Michael Mulgrew and his fellow loyalty-oath signers are going to dump them into an inferior health care plan. We don’t know the details, because they choose not to share them with us. They appear to assume we are not important enough to be kept informed.

Mulgrew and his highly-compensated BFFs run a fake union hall in which members have virtually no voice. They make decisions that diminish our health care, and blame them on the Municipal Labor Committee. They think we’re too stupid to know that UFT Unity’s vote makes those things possible.

They urge us to waste our time on actions that mean little or nothing. Demonstrate for a fair contract, they say, by sitting in a union-busting Starbucks. Go stand with us, somewhere, while we demand pay that’s sub-inflationary, and have no say over our health care. They desperately hope we will never wake up and become real activists.

What do real activists look like? Right now, they look like the indefatigable NYC Retirees group, who demonstrate relentlessly, and appear in court, winning over and over. They include a UFT faction called Retiree Advocate. (Donate to them now, and support real activism.)

I just got my first UFT retiree newsletter. It’s dated September, arrived October 10th, and the item most directly relevant to city retirees occurred in August. That item, of course, is that the UFT bosses and Eric Adams lost their most recent bid to dump us all into a privatized “Advantage” plan run by Aetna.

Aetna has a fabled history, of course. It had a fabulous slave insurance policy way back when. If anything happened to your slave, Aetna was there to provide reimbursement for lost property. These days, it appears they’ll simply threaten your doctors if they recommend other doctors out of network. A fine company to depend upon in your golden years, say Eric Adams and his partners, the UFT bosses.

For UFT Retiree Chapter Boss Tom Murphy, it appears neither here nor there. He has nothing whatsoever to say about it. It’s as though nothing whatsoever were happening. Lawsuit? Diminishment of health care? What, me worry? Instead, he writes about Florida. Things are terrible in Florida. Perhaps none of the bosses noticed that union was up against it out there. More likely, they want to divert attention from their catastrophic efforts to derail our health care.

What’s really bad about Florida, of course, is that it’s run by an anti-union lunatic named Ron De Santis. And even if that were not the case, Florida’s unions have been up against it for decades. There’s no tenure there, really, and the best you can do is score a multi-year contract rather than a single-year contract.

Evidently because things are so bad in Florida, bosses like Tom Murphy think we should sit down and shut up here in New York. There’s no hint, for example, that Murphy thinks we should take action to protect our health care. Obviously there wouldn’t be, because Tom Murphy’s job directly depends on his loyalty to the UFT Unity Caucus. If Mulgrew and his stooges tell Murphy to take a dive so Eric Adams can save a few bucks, Murphy obediently lies down on the floor.

Tom Murphy is as useful as a pile of mud. So is Michael Mulgrew and everyone else doing absolutely nothing to help members. We have to help ourselves. As retirees, we can vote them out this spring. I don’t know whether or not Murphy will run again, but whoever Unity nominates to replace him will support the same old tired nonsense. They want us to bury our heads in the sand and continue to follow directions.

Unions, though, need leaders, not bosses. We need people who understand that it’s our prime directive to improve things for members. Union sets the standard for other working people. We don’t need lectures on how things are worse elsewhere. We need to improve things here, and set examples for other places.

First and foremost, we have to vote. It’s absolutely unacceptable that almost 80% of educators don’t see fit to do so. We are role models. As such, we can’t allow ourselves to be mistreated like this by the indifferent, inept, self-serving and morally bankrupt Unity Caucus. As retirees, we can dump them this Spring.

Active members can follow in our footsteps next year. Say goodbye to Unity, and hello to Union.