Union Leader Says City Plumbers Were Kept in the Dark About New Health Plan Proposal

Members of Plumbers Local 1 march outside the gates of City Hall in support of New York City retirees fighting back against the Medicare Advantage push on Oct. 12, 2022.

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By Joe Maniscalco

The City of New York’s new health care plan for in-service and pre-Medicare municipal employees will directly impact the lives of hundreds of rank and file members of Plumbers Local 1—but the head of the union says he and his union have been kept completely in the dark about the proposal.

“I don’t have any information to give my members,” Plumbers Local 1 Business Manager Paul O’Connor told Work-Bites this week. “We just have to accept it—and we’re not happy about it.”

Members of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC]—the umbrella organization representing some one-hundred-odd New York City unions—are set to vote on the city’s proposed new health plan early this week without ever seeing the full contract from Emblem Health and United Healthcare.

If approved, the plan would start Jan. 1 and replace the current GHI CBP lan for in-service members and pre-Medicare retirees.

“We understand employees and pre-Medicare retirees have questions regarding the new plan, but these details would not be available at this stage of the procurement process for any city contract,” City Hall Deputy Press Secretary William Fowler told Work-Bites in an email. “While some details have been shared with the MLC because health benefits are a mandatory subject of bargaining, they would not be shared outside the collective bargaining process until the appropriate stage in the city's procurement process.”

Plumbers Local 1 quit being a dues-paying member of the MLC back in 2014, but O’Connor said that’s no excuse for depriving the city workers in his union from being given information about possibly impending changes to their health care.

MLC Executive Secretary Ellen Medwid insists, however, that unions—at least those in the MLC—have been provided “ample information concerning the healthcare contract.”

“Over the course of the past year they have been kept apprised of the progress in the public healthcare contract procurement process,” she told Work-Bites in an email. “The MLC and the City, in June, voted to select the joint venture of Emblem and United Healthcare as the vendor subject to negotiation of a contract and MLC approval.”  

Since that time, Medwid says representatives from the City of New York and MLC met over the summer to negotiate a contract with the Emblem Health and United Healthcare.

“That was accomplished in August,” she added. “The resulting  plan design, which included an expansion of network providers and benefits all while preserving no contribution to premium, was immediately laid out for MLC members and included a comparison of the new plan with the current one along with a solicitation for questions.”

“Laid out for MLC members,” however, doesn’t mean MLC members were given adequate opportunity to read and absorb the contract they are being expected to vote on—because they weren’t.

An un-redacted version of the contract still won’t be available during the public notice period immediately following the MLC’s vote.

The MLC Steering Committee will meet Monday, Sept. 29 and vote on whether to approve, deny, or table the proposed plan for more information. If approved, it’'ll go to the full membership for a vote the next day.

The Educators of NYC, an outspoken group of New York City public school teachers critical of the MLC and UFT President Michael Mulgrew’s push for the new health plan, wrote on its Substack last week that the “entire scheme is being rushed forward without transparency, without accountability, and without the trust of the rank and file.”

“In a true member-driven union where all members vote on things like major political endorsements and ratifying major healthcare agreements, every member would need to take heed,” they wrote. “But here we are. Delegates and chapter leaders, you are the last line of defense.” 

The UFT will hold a special Delegate Assembly to vote on the city’s new health care plan later in the afternoon on Monday, Sept. 29.

O’Connor says he is weighing legal options and is willing to be a plaintiff in any other possible lawsuits involving the rollout of the proposed new health plan.