‘Elections Have Consequences’: NYC Teacher Retirees Save Their Medicare

The dissident Retiree Advocate caucus in the giant New York City teachers union won a decisive victory over the incumbents in the retiree chapter election June 14, winning 63 percent of the 27,000 votes cast. Turnout jumped compared to previous elections.

In addition to running the 70,000-member Retired Teachers Chapter, they will send 300 delegates to the union’s delegate assembly.

The leadership of the union got the message and abruptly dropped its support for Medicare Advantage, after three years of vigorously campaigning to impose a for-profit plan on 250,000 city retirees to save money for city officials. United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew sent letters on June 23 withdrawing support for the plan, marking an abrupt break with NYC Mayor Eric Adams.

“He did this because we had an election, and elections have consequences,” said incoming chapter president Bennett Fischer, a former school chapter leader who taught in Brooklyn for 29 years.

The success of Retiree Advocate unsettled the union’s incumbent Unity Caucus leadership, which has ruled the union since its early days. Retirees have always been a reliable bloc that voted for Unity.

The shakeup in its largest local may chasten the American Federation of Teachers nationally. “Everyone’s excited and looking at their own situation. If this started spreading it would be great,” said Bobby Greenberg, the slate’s incoming treasurer.

MEDICARE DISADVANTAGE

The caucus’s fight against Medicare Advantage was decisive.

UFT leaders led the charge in the city’s 100-union Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) bargaining bloc to switch municipal retirees from traditional Medicare with a wraparound supplement to a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan run by Aetna. “UFT was really the linchpin” of the effort, Greenberg said.

On paper, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans may look like they cover gaps in traditional Medicare, wrapping in a drug plan, but they are run by private companies and are notorious for delaying and denying claims, just like other private insurance. Traditional Medicare covers all doctors and hospitals, while Advantage plans limit what providers you can use. But the MA plans are cheaper, which is why MLC leaders wanted to make the switch.

For city retirees, who were promised traditional Medicare and a comprehensive wraparound to cover additional costs, the MA plan was clearly inferior, and many called it a betrayal.

“For years they said ‘trust us, this plan is as good as or better than the plan you have now,’” said Fischer. “How is limited doctors better? How is pre-approvals better?

“After three years of us going to retired teacher chapter meetings and getting the message out, working with other organizations, it was clear that Mulgrew and other union leaders had no credible backing for their unfounded assertions.”

A cross-union retiree group sued to stop implementation. The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees (NYCOPSR) includes workers across city unions, from EMTs to teachers to sanitation workers. They kept winning and the city kept appealing, but the city has lost every case.

CRUSHING DISSENT

In addition to the city’s appeals, retiree activists had to contend with a crackdown on dissent by union leaders.

Leaders of the District 37 Retirees Association objected to the Medicare Advantage switch, and worked with other retiree groups to oppose it. In retaliation, national AFSCME swept in February 22, seized the association’s treasury, and locked the chapter’s elected leaders out of their offices.

The union claimed the association gave money to NYCOPSR and that in turn was used to support a candidate in an AFSCME local’s election, but retiree association leaders, and NYCOPSR leader Marianne Pizzitola, a retired EMT, said the charges were baseless as no money was given to the candidate.

In UFT, too, member objections to Medicare Advantage precipitated a crackdown. Incumbent Retired Teacher Chapter leaders stopped allowing resolutions, and filled meeting time with inconsequential presentations to prevent discussion from breaking out, said Sheila Zukowsky, the incoming recording secretary and a former middle school teacher.

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Retiree Advocate formed two decades ago and has run slates in previous elections. They gained some ground three years ago when the Medicare Advantage plan was leaked just before ballots were sent out. They drew 30 percent of the vote. But they had little information and little time to organize, and only fielded 120 delegate candidates out of 300 slots.

This time was different. After three years of campaigning on the issue, in addition to tested officer candidates, they were able to assemble a full 300-delegate team. Retired Teacher Chapter delegates vote in the union’s delegate assembly, alongside 2,000 delegates representing active members.

Retiree Advocate organizers started with 100 delegates who had run with Retiree Advocate before. Then they added another 100 who were active with other dissident caucuses among active members, Fischer said. Then “friends who were smart and informed, but weren’t involved, we asked them to run,” said Fischer. They ended up with 331 possible candidates.

Retiree Advocate has lately been accused of being a one-issue party, Fischer said, but in fact the caucus had a whole platform of union democracy and social causes even before the Medicare Advantage fight emerged. This includes supporting a statewide comprehensive health care plan for all New Yorkers called the New York Health Act. While the UFT’s delegate assembly has voted to support it twice, Greenberg said, the UFT leadership has been a roadblock.

This time, they spent months discussing the platform, and asked all 331 potential delegates to accept it. “We made them make a commitment, we’re not asking you to agree with every line, but accept it,” Fischer said. After some didn’t accept it, and some were disqualified for technical reasons, they ended up with a full slate of 300 delegates.

Retiree Advocate activists then used those 300 as a base for contacting other retirees: “Give us a list of friends you’re calling and call them. Tell them to give you a list of friends they’re calling.” Then they went through the lists and made sure everyone followed through, said Fischer. Then after the ballots were mailed out, they got back to them, asking “Did you vote? Did you walk the ballot to the post office? Which of your friends told you they voted? We made people honor commitments to vote.”

The Retiree Advocate caucus calculated that they not only got more people out to vote, but they changed minds among those who ordinarily voted for the ruling Unity Caucus.

DEMOCRATIC REFORM

Fischer said the lack of democracy led directly to the Medicare Advantage fiasco: “If they had consulted with the members, this never would have happened.”

Within the retiree chapter, Greenberg said, they can immediately implement more democracy by allowing resolutions back on the agenda and figuring out how to allow people attending online to vote. “They do it for the delegate assembly,” he said.

Since the pandemic, Retiree Chapter members can attend remotely and speak, and this has been a big benefit for retirees in Florida or Arizona or those who find it hard to attend meetings in person, he said.

Leafletting was not allowed at chapter meetings; they “put us out in the cold,” said Zukowsky. “Let people put out their literature for people,” said Greenberg.

“It sounds absurd, but they’re instructed not to let the mic out of the hands of people in the Unity Caucus,” Greenberg said, “so when you speak, you can’t hold the mic.” That practice will end.

The chapter hopes to contribute to a renovation of UFT’s practices overall. “We could make some changes, but we can’t do it by ourselves,” said Greenberg. “It would need to be under the leadership of in-service people.”

In particular, vice-president positions that used to be elected by sections of the union are now elected at-large. This change was made in 1985 when a dissident candidate, Michael Shulman, got elected vice-president for academic high schools. Unity challenged his election, kept him out of office for 18 months, and then changed the rules for the next election, Fischer said. Shulman is now an incoming vice chair of the Retired Teachers Chapter.

Also, Unity caucus has increasingly made elected positions into appointments. “We want to go back to a model where it’s representative of the people they’re supposed to represent,” said Fischer. For example, district representatives and borough representatives used to be elected, but are now patronage positions.

Retiree Advocate delegates also hope to give support to active members’ ongoing fight to improve their own future retirement benefits.

“I’m hopeful. We really won with a big mandate,” Fischer said.