Whoever’s Responsible for Those MLC Leaks Deserves a Medal
The heads of the MLC may not like it, but leaked audio has provided New Yorkers with vital information about the continued health and well-being of municipal workers.
By Joe Maniscalco
It looks like the New York City Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] is starting to leak like a sieve and that’s a great thing for everybody who’s spent the last four years demanding true transparency and real participatory democracy out of the group.
Since our inception in 2022, Work-Bites has reported on the growing unrest and frustration roiling underneath the MLC’s umbrella organization of 100-plus New York City unions.
Both active workers and retirees alike willing to speak out have long called for a new kind of MLC—one where members actually feel like they have a stake in the proceedings and doesn’t simply operate under the dictates of DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, and Teamsters Local 831 chief Harry Nespoli, now retired.
“If the city is going to negotiate with the Municipal Labor Committee for our health benefits, then the Municipal Labor Committee needs to represent all of our union rank and file members,” Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee [CROC] member Sarah Shapiro told Work-Bites ahead of a March 9, 2023 mobilization against the now abandoned Medicare Advantage push. “It’s a sham if two unions vote and control the entire decision. That system is not working for all of us—and we have to change that.”
That same year, Correction Captains Association President Patrick Ferraiuolo, now also retired, told Work-Bites, “Even though I have a vote [in the MLC] it doesn’t mean anything because all it takes is the teacher’s union [UFT] [and] DC37 to vote and everybody else’s vote is null and void because they carry that much weight.”
Retired Deputy Fire Chief Richard Alles called out the MLC triumvirate in blistering fashion more than three years ago, suggesting they were nothing but a bunch of union “scabs” for spearheading the campaign to strip municipal retirees of their traditional Medicare coverage and push them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.
“The City of New York made a very simple contract with me,” Alles told a retiree rally held outside the gates of City Hall on Oct. 12, 2022. “If I survived my career putting my life on the line, they promised me two things: They promised me a pension—and they promised my health benefits in my retirement.”
The retired firefighter called that contract with New York City a sacred bond. “I kept my oath,” Alles added. “The City of New York is not keeping its oath.”
Last week, leaked audio featuring MLC and UFT attorney Alan Klinger emerged on the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees’ YouTube channel discussing both the MLC’s plan to “move away”, or spike, New York City’s Health Insurance Stabilization Fund [HISF]—as well as the City of New York’s subsequent failure to meet its obligations to 9/11 widows and orphans.
The continued well-being of the now depleted HISF—originally intended to help cover the cost of municipal employee health care benefits—was of course, initially used as the pretext for pushing municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan—a scheme that, according to its proponents, was supposed to save the City of New York $600 million annually.
Well, thanks to another another recent MLC leak, New Yorkers learned about the existence of City Comptroller Brad Lander’s newly-released audit of the HISF.
The comptroller’s audit has found that the HISF not only “lacks transparency and has inadequate governance and decision-making capacity”—but that the Office of Labor Relations [OLR] and the MLC also “authorized significant transfers or payments from HISF that were not consistent with the Fund’s declared purpose(s).”
The comptroller’s statement further says, “HISF does not have governing documents that set forth the Technical Committee’s purpose or authority, membership appointments, committee meeting frequency, attendees, or a process for disseminating information to OLR and the MLC for decision making.”
He also noted that “HISF has accrued significant liabilities totaling $3.1 billion through Fiscal Year 2023 for equalization payments owed to the City, and amounts owed to vendors as of April 2025, which it is unable to pay,” and further recommended “the City work with the MLC to dissolve the Fund.”
DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and the other heads of the MLC predictably jeered the audit as “outrageous” and “unprecedented.” They also characterized the leak revealing the existence of the comptroller’s HISF audit as some kind of betrayal in a Dec. 26 “Breach of Trust” letter sent to MLC union leaders.
“We thought we were beyond that after the breaches concerning Medicare Advantage matters when a number of our leaders spoke out against leaks of privileged information,” the MLC letter states. “Here, when faced with a false and biased assessment of the Stabilization Fund by Comptroller staff, one we were seeking to correct if not defer to the next administration, we cannot possibly imagine what was to be gained by leaking the discussion. Those prospects may well be now dimmed.”
Authoritarians and anti-democratic characters always decry leaks. But whistleblowers are moved to action when they feel important concerns are not being addressed—and history shows that leaks are often the only way the public learns about criminal deeds and wrongdoing the powerful strive hard to keep in the dark.
Let’s keep those leaks coming.