What Happened to My Health Stabilization Fund?

There's officially nothing left.

Well folks, we’ve reached the literal bottom of the barrel. Our health insurance stabilization fund, designed to keep us from paying premiums on either Emblem/GHI or HIP, no longer has any money in it at all. In retrospect, perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to surrender over half of it to the city back in 2014. Who would’ve thunk it? Not the Unity Caucus, that’s for sure.

Of course, Michael Mulgrew and Unity’s Very Smart People didn’t have that in mind back then. They just thought it was a great idea for us to fund our own raises. To my mind, to say the least, that’s less than ideal. Once you set a precedent like that, it sets you up to, essentially, tread water as opposed to keeping up with cost of living.

When our President wants us to fund our own raises, we need a new President.

Funding our own raises wasn’t the only innovation Unity brought us that year. We’d been waiting a while to get the dual 4% raises the firefighters and police had gained. But hey, thought Unity’s Very Smart People—why not make members wait another four years to actually get the money?

I recall this distinctly because I bought a new car that year. I remember thinking, “Imagine if I tried to pay the dealer the way Mulgrew wants to pay me.” The dealer would have tossed me right out. I happened to be car-shopping with my daughter. I imagined the spectacle of my being physically tossed out of Garden City Mazda might traumatize her. I opted against it.

What I did instead was pay the dealer. You know, with money. By then, I’d been teaching about 30 years. I, too, was accustomed to being paid, with money. My union leader, Michael Mulgrew, had other notions. Not only did he manage not to pay me, but he wanted me to wait years before I got the money.

In fairness, the dealer was also willing to wait years to get paid. I could pay him a little each month if I liked. However, for the privilege of borrowing that money and driving away with a new CX-5, I would have to pay interest. This, evidently, is what they charge for the service of lending you money.

But teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, secretaries, social workers, OT/PTs, and everyone else associated with the UFT got no interest at all. That year, I remember feeling Michael Mulgrew had no interest in us at all.

In fact, the only time Mulgrew really seems interested in us is during election time—either right after he loses, or when he faces a serious challenge.

Like now, for example. He doesn’t love the notion of facing Amy Arundell, and all his minions are knee deep in personal attacks. After all, how do you defend all those sellouts?

Unsurprisingly, the notion of funding our own raises did not work out as expected. Mulgrew had counted on the retirees lying down in the middle of the road and allowing the Unity Bus to run over them. After all, why not have people on fixed incomes, people who do not benefit in any way shape or form from contract negotiations, pay for them?

That sounds fair, doesn’t it? (If it doesn’t, you’re probably not in the Unity Caucus.)

It turns out Marianne Pizzitola didn’t think so. This retired EMT worker went and formed NYC Retirees, and they’ve been kicking Michael Mulgrew’s ass all over the place on a fairly regular basis. Mulgrew has one more chance to dump us all into an inferior Medicare Advantage plan in the Bentkowski case, coming up next month.

Mulgrew claims he will take action if we lose. That said, the only actions he’s taken thus far have amounted to supporting the city against us in Bentkowski, and lobbying against state and city bills that would protect our health care.

Unity wants us to believe people who actively work against us support us.

Mulgrew made incredibly stupid deals, and reckoning is nigh:

The city government and the MLC are currently in negotiations to find ways to salvage the stabilization fund and cut overall health care expenses. This could result in cuts to city workers’ benefits or increased health care costs for employees, potentially including the city imposing $1,500 premium charges on health plans that have historically been provided to workers premium-free. Any changes to city workers’ health care would be subject to collective bargaining between the city and MLC.

Make no mistake, these changes are already in the works. Mulgrew’s already agreed to premiums, and alternatives to them include higher co-pays or tiered medical care. The specter of premiums is wreaking havoc among those already facing tough choices:

“I already don’t get paid enough, and now you want to charge me extra?” said Tali Zabari, a teaching assistant at a Manhattan Pre-K. “I only make around $1,300 biweekly and I have expenses to pay.”

Zabari told New York Focus that the news is making her reconsider her plans to move out of her parents’ house in southern Brooklyn.

Perhaps a paraprofessional bonus, should it ever materialize, could help some of our lower-paid members out of situations like these, at least for as long as they last. That said, utilizing the 450 million dollars Michael Mulgrew had around contract time could have granted paras, as well as OT/PTs, substantial raises that would be pensionable and permanent.

We can literally no longer afford Unity leadership.

If digging holes is what you want leadership to do, you’ve got great leadership right now. But depleting our health stabilization fund was a terrible idea. Buying a raise we should’ve gotten for free, adding years to get it, interest free, and then stamping a crap pattern on top of it is an abomination.

It’s nice that Michael Mulgrew runs our Delegate Assembly, and gets as much time as he wishes to say whatever the hell suits him and preclude whatever member voice he wishes to quash. It’s great that he can sell us out, over and over, completely blow through our health stabilization fund, and hope we don’t notice. It’s fantastic that he can do this for years and get away with it.

You know what would be even better? It would be better if we fired Michael Mulgrew. We could give him his walking papers. We could hire someone to get in there and clean up his mess. I recall the old Pete Seegar song:

We were waist deep in the big muddy, and the big fool said to push on…

It’s time to drag ourselves out of the big muddy. We need a new leader who’s willing to go in there and clean up the mess. That leader is Amy Arundell. Amy is responsive to member needs, and there are few more pressing than health care.

Salary’s also a top issue. It was right up there in ABC surveys. We need to address the dysfunctional Municipal Labor Committee (MLC). Michael Mulgrew and Unity pushed the MLC to make insane moves that have diminished our health care. He claimed it was done to preclude premiums. This notwithstanding, he specifically agreed to them, and they may be on the horizon regardless

It’s time for new leadership. Make no mistake—the reason Unity is going full steam ahead after ABC is we are a threat. We are the only threat, and we are the only choice if you’re tired of Unity autocracy making blunder after blunder.

I’m very proud to be on the ABC ticket. Our union needs to be service-oriented, as opposed to whatever the hell it is Michael Mulgrew is trying to do. No one I’ve ever met, particularly in the UFT, is more service-oriented than Amy Arundell. Keep that in mind this May and check ABC on your ballot.

I know you’ve had enough of this nonsense. So have we. It’s time for real union, a union in which we support and help one another.

I can’t wait.