I’ve only been retired for one year. I attended at least most of the RTC meetings since October. I know two were only presentations, so I didn’t bother with them. Nonetheless, the ones I attended were mind-blowing.
They were like being transported to some alternate universe. In this universe, everyone adored the Medicare Advantage plan we were being forced into. If Unity’s Tom Murphy had anything to say about it, the leadership was out doing wonderful things, as always, and health care was barely mentioned at all. The first meeting I went to was cut short for fear of some demonstration or other that seemed not to have happened.
But what Unity’s Murphy purposefully chose to cut, on the first meeting of the year, was member participation. First, he let us know that no signs were allowed. Actually, if he’d have only let us talk, we wouldn’t need signs. Why would there be signs? Well, most signs I’ve seen this year, from city retirees at least, were to protest the “Advantage” plan that Unity was pushing. And to top it off, of course, there were no questions.
Union, according to UFT Unity:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but at RTC meetings last year, not once did we vote on anything. Not once was a motion put forth, let alone entertained or discussed. It’s like we didn’t even matter. Unity’s Murphy would call us, “Michael’s Army,” as though we were there to serve the UFT President. Unity has it entirely backward. The UFT President is there to serve us. That is his job, and in that he has failed miserably.
There is an official UFT Retiree Facebook Group. It is a perfect mirror of Unity’s Bizarro World. In that group, with rare official exceptions, no one is unhappy about being forced into an inferior health plan. I’m pretty sure that nothing I wrote there was ever posted. I tried to put something in about us winning the election, but the moderator sent a message that this was not yet deemed official.
Then the moderator posted something about Father’s Day. I pointed out that that, too, had not yet been deemed official. That comment was removed. The moderator is a stickler about policy, whatever that may be at any given moment. Yet I’ve seen the moderator tell people, when they protested co-pays, “Stop spreading misinformation.”
Tom Murphy can go on at length about civility, even if we all know it just means to sit down and shut up rather than discuss our ongoing health care crisis. But he doesn’t utter a squeak when his people call us liars. (This is particularly egregious in a forum that purports to have such high standards.)
Evidently, civility’s required when you’re in the opposition, and say whatever the hell you feel like is required when you support UFT Unity.
And speaking of UFT Unity, it’s nice that Michael Mulgrew, after two crushing electoral defeats, has stood up and said that UFT now opposes dumping retirees into Medicare. It’s also nice that he said he would “go to war” over the notion of imposing premiums on in-service members. Not so nice is the fact that Unity’s Mulgrew agreed to all of the above and personally initiated it without consulting membership AT ALL.
Hey, I’d love to forget that. I’d love to be “civil,” but we can never forget. Unity betrayed us. They hid it from us. They lied to us, over and over, claiming MA was better than reaI Medicare. I will not forget. I know you won’t either.
As far as Facebook and newsletters, I’m oriented toward unionism and politics. I don’t mind reading things about what retirees are doing, or where they traveled. I don’t mind hearing about fun activities and luncheons. I’m glad there are Si Beagle courses (even though I just learned it’s actually the UFT Welfare Fund that controls them). I think it’s great there are courses for retirees to enjoy.
Happy talk is great. It is, in fact, a nice change from the non-stop negativity of the news. We all need it sometimes.
Nonetheless, we are union. We need to stand up both for ourselves and our in-service brothers and sisters. We need work toward setting standards for working people who haven’t yet got the benefit of union.
And because of that, it behooves us, the RTC, to provide real news to our members. Members can ignore it and just read the happy stuff if that’s what they want. But there must be a choice.
Our health care struggle is complex. Members need access to exactly what’s happening. Members need to know what’s going to court, when and why. Members need to know what bills are in the City Council, and what bills are in the State Legislature. Members need to know whether our leadership will ensure their passage.
Members need to know what they can do to support this cause we’ve dedicated ourselves to. And while it’s great that the NYC Retirees are providing a lot of this information, we need to provide it from a UFT perspective. UFT members need to know what they can do, if they choose, to help.
I will work to make that happen.
Because of UFT Unity’s insane giveaways to Eric Adams, we will all have to work to protect the benefits for which we worked. I gave almost four decades to New York City. I earned considerably less than my friends who taught on Long Island. Only now, as I’m finally enjoying the long-promised retirement benefits (the ones my friends with all that money haven’t got), I see them imperiled.
That’s unacceptable, and next year has to be different. Retiree Advocate has a vision that’s nothing like UFT Unity’s, and for that I’m thankful. We are unionists, and we will encourage our fellow retirees, as well as our in-service brothers and sisters, to be unionists too.
We’ve done something no one in the history of union has done. We’ve moved to make the UFT an activist, democratic, member-driven union. UFT Unity may want us to sit around playing shuffleboard or dominos. They may want us to doze through fake meetings while Unity bosses deal away our hard-earned benefits for nothing (or less than nothing).
But we are the new leaders of our union, and next year, we will bring rank and file along with us. We will wake up the sleeping giant that is our United Federation of Teachers.
I’m glad that as retirees we are standing up and fighting for our rights and for ourselves.
Bravo. I hope the Rank and
file know and understand what is going on.