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By Joe Maniscalco

In the span of two days, New York City retirees battling to save Medicare from extinction have called out corrupt union misleaders willing to sell out the entire labor movement for Medicare Advantage; challenged President Joe Biden to finally get real about what needs to be done to rescue Medicare; and provided a game plan on how to win back rank and file control from the misleadership class.

It began on Friday afternoon outside Federal Plaza on Broadway where building security refused to allow retirees in coalition with the National Alliance of Retiree Healthcare to deliver a letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, calling on Biden and the agency to “make Medicare whole.”

“Take that money that the insurance companies are robbing — and there’s an estimate that it’s up to $140 billion a year — and put into Medicare,” New York City municipal retiree and Cross-Union Retirees Organizing Committee member [CROC] Julie Schwartzberg said. “Why does Medicare make us pay 20 percent? Why don’t they have dental? Why don’t they have optical? We can take the money from the fraud — and put it in and make Medicare whole.”

Stu Eber, head of the Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations [COMRO], recalled how working class people used to have a pretty good bead on who was gunning for them — but not anymore. 

“Through the years, we always thought the enemy was the Republicans who were against Social Security like Barry Goldwater…and Ronald Reagan against Medicare,” Eber said. “Then we wake up in the 21st century and we have Democrats and Republicans who are forcing Medicare Advantage on us.”

Eber also noted how more than half the Medicare-eligible people in the United States today are now enrolled in a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.

They have lost their Medicare,” Eber said. “They’re on Medicare Advantage. And why? Because of [the 20 percent] Medigap. Because they have to pay for their Medicap insurance — unlike city employees. It was cheaper for them to say, ‘I’ll give my Part B to an insurance company, and they’ll take care of me for everything else.’ Unfortunately, they have found out the hard way that it doesn’t work that well. That they aren’t getting better healthcare — they’re getting worse health care.”

The following day, 90-year-old municipal retiree Evie Jones-Rich lambasted the heads of New York City’s shadowy Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] — the same labor leaders bent on driving 250,000 municipal retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan — and who Jones-Rich says is using the MLC as “cover” for refusing to “carry out their mandate.”

“The first thing I want you to remember is that most of the union movement today is corrupt,” Jones-Rich said at a special town hall about the MLC held inside the People’s Forum on W. 37th Street. “It is corrupt. The leaders have no vision. They have lost their way. They are not doing their job. And one of the things you're going to walk away with [today] is the feeling that is going to change.”

Originally created back in 1966 as a way of leveraging the power of New York City’s public sector unions against the political bosses — the MLC, through a heavily weighted voting structure that rests all of the controlling power in the hands of the three largest unions in the organization — has devolved into a different kind of undemocratic beast altogether.

“They need a two-thirds vote to pass a motion, and it doesn’t matter if most of the other unions behind them want the opposite,” Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Services Retirees and the FDNY EMS Retirees Association, said. “Whatever those large unions want — that’s what ends up happening.”

District Council 37 Progressive Caucus member Robert Cuffy jeered his own union VP Anthony Wells for supporting AFSCME’s takeover of the DC37 Retirees Association, as well as the organization’s overall lack of transparency.

“This is the position we're at — at least at the Administration for Children's Services — people who work as child protective specialists and supervisors are beaten down on such a daily basis just doing the work — we barely have time to raise our head above the water to participate in the union,” Cuffy said. “And those of us who do participate in the union face a very opaque bureaucracy.”

Pizzitola criticized the MLC leadership with not "recognizing their own value” and “trauma-bonding” with the mayoral bosses following more than a decade of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s anti-union tyranny. 

“Everything around us goes up in value,” Pizzitola said. “So, if that’s the case — then how come labor, our value diminishes, and we have to give up something in order to get something back? The rest of the world, your big unions — [United Auto Workers] — they’re noticing that. They’re making strides removing tiering and improving their healthcare. We shouldn’t be giving ours back.”

Last week, Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson also called out those labor leaders embracing profit-driven Medicare Advantage plans and selling out the rank & file. 

“I’ll say it right here and right now, unions have lost their way,” Nelson said at a Medicare for All forum on April 10. “I don't agree with it. I completely disagree with it. I'm opposed to that position. I think it hurts our solidarity. It hurts care for ourselves in our communities — and it sells out the people that we are here for, and charged to protect.”

Just a couple of weeks prior, the NYC Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America received flak after they invited TWU Local 100 officer JP Patafio to another town hall on public sector organizing also held inside the People’s Forum — because Patafio is part of a leadership team at TWU Local 100 that’s also attempting to push its retirees into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.

CROC member Gloria Brandman, meanwhile, is running on the Retiree Advocate-UFT ticket in the UFT’s upcoming chapter elections in May. The Retiree Advocate-UFT ticket is a direct challenge to UFT President and Medicare Advantage proponent Michael Mulgrew’s entrenched hold on the teachers union.

“We are running a full slate against the UFT Unity leaders of our union,” Brandman said. “Our union has sold us out.”

Pizzitola urged more rank & file members everywhere to “take back” their unions.

“This is where that trauma-bonding comes back…you are conditioned to thinking you have no value, [and] you have to accept the measly pittance that they have to give you,” she said. “Your value is not in a box — and the only way to get that [power] back is you have to take back your leadership. Don’t let them stay in power. Get your friends, make a coalition, take back your local — they’re trying to take back their retiree chapter — you have to make noise.”

Fellow CROC member Sarah Shapiro urged retirees to continue coalition-building with others throughout the country.

“The more I get into this fight, the more I believe that coalition building is the way to go,” Shapiro said. “It’s not only municipal retirees that are being screwed over — it’s the home care attendants who are being forced to work 24 hours, and being paid for 13 hours, and the City Council saying they’re the most progressive in this city’s history, [but also] ‘We can’t do anything for you.’ We are working hard with other groups — [like the] Poor People’s Campaign — it’s not only us…we need to keep growing, expanding because when we get right down to it — we need to fight the system.”