Memo to Careerists Everywhere: Working Class People Need You to Get the Hell Outta the Way
Retired Teamster John Pinard (with bullhorn) denounces the Medicare Advantage push at a rally held outside the gates of City Hall on January 4, 2023. Photo/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
Two years ago at a Medicare rally for municipal retirees outside the gates of City Hall, IBT Local 831 retiree John Pinard expressed his utter astonishment and disbelief that a labor leader he considered “the most courageous fighter I’ve ever seen in my life” was trying to strip former civil servants like him of their traditional healthcare and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.
“I can’t put together in my head how this came about,” Pinard said. “I’m not supposed to be out here fighting for something I already earned. This is unbelievable.”
Nespoli stepped down as head of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association this week, a position he held for almost 25 years. Before hanging out the “Gone Fishin’” sign for good, Nespoli—along with District Council 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and UFT President Michael Mulgrew—comprised the three-headed puppet masters at the helm of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC]. Together, they devoted a lot of their time vociferously and forcefully advocating for the Medicare Advantage push.
“Without a doubt, it’s the only way out because its going to guarantee $600 million over the next six years and that’s coming from the companies that are handling this thing and doctors will be paid by the federal government,” Nespoli said in 2023.
The same guy Pinard called “the most courageous fighter I’ve ever seen in my life,” then called the privatization push a “win-win” for all and blamed “a small group of retirees [who] don’t want to accept the change” for undermining their predatory scheme.
Fast-forward to today, and the Medicare Advantage push that Nespoli and company fought so hard to implement is largely falling apart because the New York City municipal retirees fighting it tooth & nail despite their many health challenges keep winning in the courts. That’s now 11 judicial rulings all in retirees’ favor. Oral arguments in the latest case are slated for May 15 in Albany.
The clout that the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees and other supportive groups have amassed after four years of successful struggle in the streets and in the courthouse has translated into no shortage of mayoral hopefuls who have pledged to abandon the Medicare Advantage push if elected later this fall.
What’s next—current Mayor Eric Adams admitting he was wrong to keep pushing the Medicare Advantage campaign at all costs and finally giving it up ahead of next week’s ruling? Who knows? Hizzoner really wants to be re-elected in November.
When it looked like he might not make it through the Democratic Party Primary on June 24, due to his prior shenanigans in office and his obdurate stance on Medicare Advantage, Adams decided to drop his party affiliation and start running as an “Independent.” Ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo this week announced his plan to do much the same thing after it looked like his own shady track record of hospital closures, Covid-19 deaths, and sexual harassment allegations wasn’t gonna fly with Democratic Party voters either.
On Tuesday, Cuomo announced he will run on the appropriately phony-sounding “Fight and Deliver” party line regardless of how he does in the Democratic Party Primary next month.
None of these characters knows when to leave—and even when you think you’ve scrapped them off your shoe for good, they keep coming back. That’s largely because it’s all about them and their craven career ambitions, as much as it is about the anti-worker and anti-democratic money machine they ultimately represent.
Who becomes the next mayor of New York City may only be a life and death decision for sick and ailing municipal retirees who need the healthcare they earned when they need it. But for the power-hungry careerists in and out of government salivating over the big chair, it’s just a prize they’ve simply gotta have.
The aforementioned head of the Sanitationmen’s Association held his union’s top post for nearly a quarter century. Mulgrew has been at the helm of the United Federation of Teachers since 2009—that’s 16 years. Garrido, meanwhile, has been the boss of New York City’s largest public sector union for over a decade. How much longer is he gonna be around?
If any of these people actually believed in the democratic principles they often espouse to justify their privilege, they would have stepped aside long ago. What? “Only they alone can fix things?” Uh, huh. Right.
Undoubtedly, the dearth of democracy that now afflicts every aspect of our collective lives is to blame for the continent-sized crater working people now find ourselves in. But let’s all get caught up in Andrew Cuomo’s carefully choreographed comeback drama and how it plays up against Eric Adams’s own sorted reality show saga. Sure thing.
If any of these characters—Cuomo, Adams, Garrido, Mulgrew, Et al. had any sense of civic responsibility they would’ve already exited with their six-figure-parachutes and accumulated fortunes in tow and stayed the hell away.
Do working class people living paycheck to paycheck have to wait a quarter century for all of them to get lost? Sadly, none of us—working or retired—has that luxury.
Instead of treating all of our anemic elections like inconsequential horse races, we should be thinking about why it’s nearly impossible for anyone truly independent of the established political order to seriously challenge entrenched power. That goes for union elections and mayoral elections alike.
Last year, municipal retirees inside the UFT opposed to the Medicare Advantage push rose up a seized control of the union’s 70,000-member Retired Teachers Chapter just like they said they would. Mulgrew subsequently reversed course and announced, at least officially, that he was pulling the plug on the UFT’s support for Medicare Advantage.
“You might have had a good thought, you had a good idea—but if people don't understand it, and people are getting anxious and frustrated and angry, you move away from it,” Mulgrew told WBAI “What’s Going On?” host Bob Hennelly on Monday, April 28.
The MLC and the City of New York have since been left to squabble over how to pay for healthcare now that municipal retirees have made it clear they will not submit to becoming their sacrificial lambs.
A little bit of democracy can go a long way.