Unity Tells Monstrous Lies

But tries to look good while doing it.

That guy above doesn’t look scary, does he? Lots of times, though, what you see isn’t really what you get. For example, if you find yourself watching Godzilla Minus One on Netflix, you’ll learn he’s not primarily known for milk and cookies.

I took a look at my auto insurance bill a few days back, and I wasn’t happy. One the one hand, you need insurance. There are a lot of crazy people out there. (I know because I’m one of them.) On the other, that’s a lot of money Allstate wants to be in those good hands. They were good to us when our cars drowned in December 2022, but we all have our limits.

My agent said we could save a few hundred bucks if we just took a six hour course online. So I paid 25 bucks to some fly by night company and sat in front of my computer. On Thursday night I did the first hour. You would read this stuff that takes two to five minutes, watch a video, and then answer some questions. The thing was, you had to wait fifteen minutes after each 2-5 minute reading before you could go to the next page.

I noticed the important stuff was in the reading. That’s what they asked you questions about, as far as I could tell. Yesterday, I started the second hour. They wanted me to watch Dr. Phil for ten minutes while he preached about the evils of texting and driving to some teenager. This vexed me. (I don’t know about you, but Dr. Phil makes me puke.)

So by hour two, I’d devised a new plan. Read for 2-5 minutes, watch Netflix for ten or fifteen, and then answer the questions. This seemed to work, the questions weren’t much of a challenge, and Godzilla Minus One is the best Japanese monster movie ever. They did ask me about one of the videos I didn’t watch, but it turned out it was about someone sleepy or drunk driving. I’d gotten the sense that neither was recommended, and muddled through somehow.

The point, of course, is not everything is what it appears. Unity is out, again, writing about just how awful Marianne Pizzitola is. Why is she out there fighting to preserve retiree health benefits? Wouldn’t it be better if she simply asked Unity what it wanted to do and did that?

Look at 1096, for example. It hasn’t passed. And in previous forms, it also didn’t pass. In fact, it’s been proposed as a statewide measure, and it didn’t pass there either.

Unity’s advice to retiree activists—Sit down and shut up.

That’s unionism to them. After all, they ran the RTC for years. They’d cut meetings short with no question period. They’d refuse to let people speak if they hadn’t personally selected them. For years, they entertained no motions and held voting on nothing whatsoever. To them, that’s democracy.

Tom Murphy would call us “Michael’s Army,” as though we represented Mulgrew. That’s backward. In fact, Mulgrew is paid, quite a bit, to represent us. At that, he’s failing miserably. We overwhelmingly voted to support 1096. Mulgrew and his minions continue to lobby against us and our interests.

The Unity writers defend this. Why? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s because they’re on the frigging payroll. Why else would they work against their own interests and defend their caucus’s outrageous breach of promise? They have a clear and overarching conflict of interest.

Mulgrew, having just fired a bunch of people for reasons having nothing to do with their work, has put his entire patronage cult on notice. We don’t care what kind of crappy work you do. We care who you associate with and who you respect. We consider anyone not kissing Mulgrew’s ring to be an enemy of the union. The union represents Unity, and the members can go straight to hell for all they care.

The Unity writer trots out the same lies Mulgrew does, of course. 1096, which affects only retirees, somehow violates the Taylor Law, which affects only rank and file. Also, 1096 interferes with collective bargaining somehow. Curious, then, that retirees get no vote and no say on collective bargaining, even when Unity chooses to sell out retirees, dumping them into an inferior plan run by a purveyor of slave insurance.

The Unity writer, though, did come up with a new nonsensical argument against 1096. What if there are improvements in our plan after 1096 is passed? That’s pretty easy to address. 1096 says:

“The city shall not diminish the health insurance coverage provided to city retirees and their dependents or the contributions the city makes for such health insurance coverage below the level of such benefits or contributions made on behalf of such city retirees and their dependents by the city as of December 31, 2021.”

It doesn’t say the city shall not improve health insurance coverage. So hey, if Mulgrew, who claims to hate premiums, wants to repeal the 300 bucks a month premium we pay for pharmacy, I won’t stand in his way. If Mulgrew, who wanted to saddle us with an additional 400 dollar a month premium to retain our health care, wishes to place us back in the UFT Welfare Fund pharmacy plan and save us thousands per year, I will raise no objection.

Here’s what Unity wants us to forget—if not for the activism of Marianne and NYC Retirees, we’d all be in an inferior “Advantage” plan RIGHT NOW.

So hey, I understand that folks on the Unity gravy train need to write whatever nonsense they can muster to rationalize the anti-union activities of our ostensible leadership. I also understand, though, that virtually every one of these people has a clear ulterior motive for supporting Mulgrew and opposing democracy.

That, of course, is either the jobs they have or the jobs they want.

There is indeed a reason Mulgrew and his goons battle 1096. It is not simply because it would repeal the Mulgrew Tax, which they think is the bestest thing ever. It’s because Mulgrew and Garrido and all the faux-union leaders are interested in preserving their power. Not our power, but theirs.

We’re not selling you out now, they seem to insist. But we reserve the right to do so later. I don’t know about you, but I would just as soon take that right away from Unity. They’ve already demostrated their willingness to use it. The only thing that changed their collective mind was getting their collective ass kicked in last year’s election.

No doubt they’d love to win the next election, use their new phony-baloney health care committee to endorse some crap, and dump it upon us at the next possible opportunity. We can’t let that happen.

Marianne is not giving up. I’m not giving up. We’re not giving up. We will stand for ourselves, and we will stand for those who follow us. We are unionists, and no double-talking, self-serving, two-timing, double-pensioned, no-work job doing, champagne-drinking, Hilton-staying, gala luncheon-attending progeny of a sinecure is going to get in our way.