The city’s powerful teachers union, the UFT, has pulled support for a push to shift retired city workers into a controversial Medicare Advantage plan, further complicating the Adams administration’s ability to implement a cost-saving proposal that was supposed to save the city $600 million a year.
The future of the health insurance plan — already tied up in the courts — is contingent on backing from the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella organization that represents all of the city’s public sector unions and helped negotiate the Advantage program. The United Federation of Teachers has large sway over the MLC as one of city’s largest municipal unions.
UFT president Michael Mulgrew, who was previously in lockstep with Mayor Adams on the Medicare Advantage plan, had a change-of-heart following his caucus losing the UFT’s retiree chapter in recent elections. That was seen as a strong rebuke of the union president going along with the mayor on Advantage, a privatized version of Medicare that some municipal retirees fear will dilute their health insurance benefits.
Chapter leader-elect Bennett Fischer told The News last week the opposition slate planned on using their win to “change our union’s position on this issue.”
“President Mulgrew should have acknowledged that he is changing his position because elections have consequences,” Fischer said Sunday. “He could have acknowledged that he is taking these steps because Retiree Advocate wrested control of the 70,000+ Retired Teachers Chapter from his Unity caucus, and because he sees that his control of the UFT is slipping away.”
The Municipal Labor Committee’s Steering Committee met Monday morning to discuss the UFT’s shock announcement. In the meeting, Mulgrew reiterated his arguments for why the UFT is withdrawing its support, and Henry Garrido, executive director of DC37, the city’s largest public sector union, responded by saying the committee will need time to digest the reversal and figure out next steps, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Harry Nespoli, the chairman of the MLC and the head of the city’s sanitation union, told the Daily News after the steering sit-down that the MLC’s full executive committee will meet Wednesday morning to continue discussing the Medicare Advantage issue. He said the goal’s to get all the MLC unions on the same page during that meeting, though he wouldn’t say whether he thinks other unions will line up behind UFT or continue their support of the Advantage plan.
“That’s what we’re hoping to accomplish,” Nespoli said.
UFT’s reversal is likely to throw the entire Medicare Advantage plan into even more jeopardy than it’s already in due to ongoing legal challenges.
Mulgrew, in a statement explaining his position, shifted blame to the Adams administration.
“It has become apparent that this administration is unwilling to continue this work in good faith,” Mulgrew, wrote in a letter to the MLC on Sunday, citing months of delayed healthcare negotiations. “This administration has proven to be more interested in cutting its costs than honestly working with us to provide high-quality healthcare to city workers,” the letter continued.
Shortly after Adams took office, a group of retired cops, firefighters and other municipal workers filed a class action lawsuit to block the change to Advantage.
Last month, the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court upheld a ruling from Manhattan Judge Lyle Frank last year that stopped the plan.
Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city Law Department, noted Monday that the city is still waiting on word from the State Court of Appeals on whether it will hear the Adams administration’s appeal of Frank’s ruling. As the state’s highest court, the State Court of Appeals is the last legal recourse for the administration’s Advantage push.
“We have been clear: the city’s plan, which was negotiated closely with and supported by the Municipal Labor Committee, would improve upon retirees’ current plans and save $600 million annually,” Paolucci said. “This is particularly important at a time when we are already facing significant fiscal and economic challenges.”
Any changes the administration might seek to the current plan in order to circumvent legal rulings would need to be approved by the MLC, according to a city labor source familiar with the matter. That would now be very difficult given that the UFT, as one of the city’s largest public sector unions, holds significant sway over the MLC, the source said.
The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, the group that has filed the lawsuits that led to the Advantage plan being blocked in the courts, cheered the UFT’s about-face.
“The United Federation of Teachers has finally acknowledged what hundreds of thousands of retired New York City municipal workers have been arguing for years: that the City should not be forcing its elderly and disabled retirees off of traditional Medicare and into a dangerous, for-profit Medicare Advantage plan,” said Marianne Pizzitola, a retired FDNY EMT who leads the group.
“It is time for the City to come to its senses and end its senseless, illegal war on retirees.”
