This was in NY Focus:
Adams and Unions Strike Deal on Shift to Cost-Cutting Medicare Plan
The mayor and major city unions plan to press the City Council to clear a path for a privatized Medicare plan for retired city workers.
At a meeting Thursday morning, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams and major unions representing municipal employees agreed on a proposal to clear the way for their long-held goal of switching retired city workers to cost-saving private Medicare Advantage plans.
The insurance shift, first reported by New York Focus more than a year ago, would likely save the city hundreds of millions of dollars a year and help pay for current workers’ benefits — but many retirees fear that it could decrease their access to health care.
At the meeting, union leaders agreed to a proposal from the administration to make a joint request to the City Council, asking it to amend city law to allow the city to charge retirees for their current health care plans. That would remove a legal roadblock that has held the switch up in court and led the insurer that had won the contract to administer the plan to back out in July.
“It wasn’t all wildly enthusiastic votes, and people were expressing qualms. But the difficulty is we’re not quite sure what else to do, because there is a financial problem here,” said Robert Croghan, chair of the executive board of the Organization of Staff Analysts, a union representing city office workers across numerous agencies. Croghan estimated that 85% of the dozens of union representatives present voted in favor of the proposal.
Oren Barzilay, president of Local 2507, a union representing fire department employees, told New York Focus that he voted against the proposal. “The law gives us protection in terms of having our current health benefits,” he said. “Why would you open up that Pandora’s box not knowing what could happen?”
Anyone like to take a guess which way Mulgrew voted? Privatized Medicare ain't called Mulgrewcare for nothing?
The battle goes to the City Council.
35 comments:
I’m confused. I thought we had a strong union.
Contract expires in 4 days. They aren’t even taking. But they care. Lol.
First activity of my day: Cursung every lazy stupid UFT member or retiree who allowed MM to remain in office. You are too brainless to know when you've been gaslit and had. Don't know why any of you deserve to stand in front of our children.
Retirees, get your checkbook out and continue supporting nycretirees.org and work with RetireeAdvocates UFT.
Looks like street activity for the fall.
Just more evidence that the UFT and several other city unions do not support the best interest of their members. A responsibility of union leadership is to get and maintain benefits for their members, not help city leaders take them away. Many retirees simply will not be able to afford or get the medical care they need. This is disgraceful!
I still belive retirees do NOT vote. Their mail in votes must have been filed by the uft themselves.
James needs to look into that: get the voter roll information, and Canvass those who voted to find those who "got voted for". Likely to find Lincoln voters as well.
Telling yah.
The writing is on the wall. Mulgrewcare will be going into effect for the retirees and very soon after, it will go into effect for every active member. The thing that shocks me the most is that other unions are agreeing to this crap as well. At least the firefighters union voted no. We are f*ucked to say the least.
No one is going to want a city job especially a city teacher job. Private industry can offer so much more today. City jobs used to be valued for both the pensions and the medical. Both are going to crap.
College grads can get a virtual or hybrid job, come in the office once or twice a week. Have meetings, go to happy hour and then work the rest of the week from home. They can earn a great deal more than a crappy teachers salary with less education, many perks. NY will have to keep dumming down the requirements to get people to teach.
This is just a total shame. Having another episode of Mulgrew and other union heads members of the MLC resurrect the very unpopular Medicare Advantage for retirees—is like saying ‘Hit me up for another go at second chaotic Donald Trump presidency.’
Mulgrew and the other unions are once again trying to shove this inferior cost saving Medicare Advantage Plan down the throats retirees -in order to save the present healthcare costs for all in service members as part of ongoing and future labor contracts.
And will Mulgrew once again claim that a newly resurrected Medicare Advantage is the greatest health plan on the planet—just like the one he pushed for in all of 2021–until he withdrew his support?
Let’s see how Mulgrew spins these new developments at the first RTC meeting on September 20. He appeared at several Zoom meetings back in 2020 and 2021 trying to sell and convince retirees of the merits of the Medicare Advantage and how it was such an improvement over the current traditional Medicare—yet it was the smaller unions that saw through the inconsistencies of the new plan—and they challenged the city—not Mulgrew. And it appears that he along with other union chiefs are continuing to do a disservice to their members.
Is there a way to find out which MLC unions for for and against the change to healthcare? I want to see who IS on the side of their members.
Mulgrew is working against the healthcare and financial interests of the UFT retirees and future retirees. Why anyone in the UFT membership voted for Mulgrew is beyond comprehension. Sadly, most teachers did not even bother to vote. That is sick. It is demonstrates the ignorance and foolishness of most teachers in the UFT.
Mulgrew should double up with Joe Namath on his ads to promote the cheap crappy Medicare Advantage plans.
Where is Mulgrew and the UFT on obtaining a new contract. A fair contract would make teachers whole on their loss of purchasing power due to inflation. A fair contract would have an "immediate" 16% increase to compensate for the inflationary spikes of 2021 and 2022.
Where is Mulgrew on doing anything to make teachers lives better?
Mulgrew is the lowest of the lowest. Mulgrew is rancid scum.
Mr. Mulgrew,
Why are you not on the side of your membership?
Membership, future retiree's do not want this.
Thank You
6:05, There are no contract negotiations because of high inflation. High inflation makes for a difficult negotiation so our union leader is happy to let our contract "now due to expire with no raise" slide until better survival times for working people come around so there will be less of a hardline negotiation. So, membership's financial survival to put food on the table are really not a priority during this time.
True. I wonder whether these mildewcare is one of the concessions he is giving Adams for whatever the raise is going to be in the new contract. Ppl who are not retired are not going to bother about this loss. Since...well...Since they are not retired, so it could not be "that bad".
I hear the City Assembly public hearing today (9/9) talked about labor shortages were already prepping the ground for the raises.
By the way, James, can you tell in length, what that public hearing was all about?
Haha.
Look how skilled the uft is 8n politicking: they not made all of us believe that retirees voted him in...now everyone is upset with them, and the public opinion is ready to push for this mildewcare-to shove it to them for the elections.
Stop being the fools. Mail in votes are easy to manipulate! Retirees (21 thousand of them you say🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯) do not want to hear /know about Mildew, once they are out.
Ppl vote for this crap now=cutting their own noses in retirement.
Uft mafia controls the election. And not only their own.
Especially when they work for Twitter-like places. Like 'fact checking" agencies.
Oh,my.
Why be surprised. Teachers happily followed the union along , when they came up with the mandate Arbitration and making everyone jabbed. And some here even cheered for it! Did you really think abuse was not going to be continued? We are lucky if they do not push another mandate on us (cause they make up science as they go).
You give away a bit of your freedom, they will always take advantage of it. I am sorry, but we are moving into industries, governments, unions colluding. There is a word that describes this condition. Anyone? Social Studies teachers here?
Cutting the branch all the current workers sit on.
610,
I’m not a mulgrew fan, but he’s not as bad as Weingarten. She is the reason why the UFT sucks.
Health coverage is the most important issue. Let’s say mayor gives us a 30% raise over 5 years but the next day our coverage changes and 20 out of that 30% raise goes to health coverage. As long as they can screw with our health coverage we don’t really know the value of our raises. Please continue to give us info on this James. What happens to retirees will happen to active teachers next.
So over 25% and counting of all city retirees-as of early spring of 2022–were willing to opt out and maintain their current traditional Medicare at a cost of $400 a month (married couples)—until a lawsuit initiated by smaller unions-had a judge put a stall on Medicare Advantage. And of course the 2 faced Mulgrew said he would not support this new Medicare Advantage Plan—the very same one that he enthusiastically supported for months. And now, here we go again. Would love to hear the new arguments and spin from Mulgrew—on why he is pushing this new privatized plan again.
Just have the strong feeling that all union heads have been told that maintaining current healthcare plan costs for all current workers in contract talks is contingent upon city being able to implement a cheaper cost saving healthcare plan for retirees.
When has anything costing less—resulted in a better product?
We elected him so we knew this was gonna happen. I believe the workers wanted this too.
30% raise? LOL. Your point about using the raise towards increasing health coverage is good, but 30% is not even on the radar.
Will not be surprised. We did hear the vaccine was the best thing since sliced bread. As in "War is Peace", "Slavery is Freedom", and....."work will set you free".
That would be in line with the current policies:
$10K College debt erased=college jacked up the tuition.
Electric cars have $10k incentives = makers make them 10( more expensive.
Vote In Person. Vote on the Election Day.
12:57 am, Yawn, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Same ole broken record. Maybe if you tried to work in tandem with your fellow teachers, and did your job instead of squawking about ridiculous red herrings, we would be able to command a higher salary and some respect. Besides, didn't you post that you also took the jab? I guess for you, you didn't "follow the union along", only everyone else who got jabbed "followed the union along".
10:42. I agree with you. I used 30%, a high number, to show that even a high number raise means nothing if we don’t know how our health coverage can cost us more in the near future. Whether it’s higher copays or whether it’s paying for private insurance bc our union plan turns to shit the value of our raise can’t be determined until our health coverage is determined.
4:25 I’m not 12:57 but this accusing of various anonymous commenters by other anonymous commenters of being THAT anonymous commenter is what’s yawn, zzzzzz, tiresome. 12:57 has a valid point. We exhibited more weakness when we didn’t stand up for fired union members. Exhibiting weakness is never good for union members.
8:38 don't really care what you think. I pick up certain buzz words that are repeated ad nauseam, you don't. Your problem. In fact you sound like the same poster. Always chiming in to what someone else is posting about while doing the same exact thing and lecturing others on what they shouldn't post about. Yawn, Zzzzzz, right back atcha hypocrite.
8:38 so you felt the need to butt in? Why?
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion but I disagree that we should wait until it's determined.
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