NYC Union Leaders, Retirees Call B.S. on MLC Heads Still Pushing Medicare Advantage

By Joe Maniscalco

A few weeks after losing another case in court, the heads of New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] now want City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams to believe efforts to stop them from privatizing retiree health care hurts collective bargaining rights. But how’s that work? No one — including members of the MLC — appears to know.

“What does that mean? Is that a threat?” Correction Captains Association President Patrick Ferraiuolo told Work-Bites this week. “I mean, I don't even get that.” 

The unsigned correspondence on MLC letterhead containing the names and logos of several labor unions outside the public sector, and sent out Thursday, August 24, asserts that Intro. 1099 would “illegally curtail the ability of City Unions to exercise their state-law right to fully negotiate retiree health benefits for in-service and retired employees going forward.”

Intro. 1099 is the City Council bill aimed at preventing the diminishment of existing retiree health care coverage from what it was as of December 31, 2021. It also explicitly states “Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed to impair the ability of any employee organization to negotiate the terms and conditions of employment for their employee members.”

“I’m in full support of Intro. 1099,” NYC Laborers Local 924 President Kyle Simmons, told Work-Bites. “This bill in no way has any effect on [union] bargaining rights. Since the retirees are not active union members, they do not bargain for retirees. For about 50 years, the City Council has been protecting the interests of the retired city workforce, and I hope they continue to do so.”

UFT retiree and Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] member Denise Rickles told Work-Bites she is “furious” with heads of the MLC and the “confusion” and “fog” they are attempting to create.

“The point is our unions screwed us,” she said. “Union bosses have turned against their members.”

CROC member Evie Jones Rich likens the latest bid by MLC heads Michael Mulgrew, Henry Garrido and Harry Nespoli to force retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna to an old fable — The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Only this time around, Jones Rich says, “The MLC is the emperor; Mulgrew and Garrido are the swindlers; those in the MLC supporting them are the crowd; and retirees are the child who insists that the Emperor has no clothes.”

“Pity the MLC,” Jones Rich told Work-Bites. “Pity the unions lending their names to the MLC’s efforts at intimidating the New York City Council. Shame on the swindlers and the MLC for insisting, incorrectly, that we retirees are in their bargaining unit. They do not represent us! Pity the private sector unions supporting them.”

At about the same time the heads of the MLC were warning Speaker Adams that Intro. 1099 would somehow “set a dangerous precedent in its illegal and ill-advised effort to detrimentally restrict the rights of unions to negotiate retiree health benefits” — Congress Member Richie Torres [NY-15] was announcing the introduction of his “Right to Medicare Act.”

“There is no set of people to whom we owe a greater debt than our senior citizens,” the local representative said in a statement. “The two programs that enable our seniors to lead decent and dignified lives are Medicare and Social Security – both of which must be protected at all costs.”

The portion of health costs traditional Medicare does not cover is known as the “MediGap.” The City of New York has been covering the MediGap costs of retirees as part of its covenant with its municipal workforce since the 1960’s.

“This should be a floor,” NYCOPCR Marianne Pizzitola told Work-Bites this week. “We're not asking for anything more, we’re not asking for anything less. We're asking you to maintain what the City had given us for 60 years. You want to collectively bargain? God bless you! Build upon that — because in no normal labor universe would someone think a union would negotiate a benefit down.”

Simmons wrote his own letter to Speaker Adams on July 18, emphasizing “retirees no longer have a voice at the table” and need the “supportive legislation” that Intro. 1099 provides.

“Lastly,” Simmons wrote, “Medicare and Medicaid are an extension of Social Security. You can’t have one without the other.” Stripping municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare coverage, Simmons added, “opens the door to privatization, which is for-profit and we already see the effects of big business there.”

“When are they [Mayor Adams and the Heads of the MLC] going to stop?” Ferraiuolo said. “They see that hundreds of thousands of retirees are so against this privatization of Medicare. And yet they are relentless. It's almost like, you know, like they owe somebody something.”