Hijacked DC37 Retirees Association ‘Opposes’ NYC Council Bill to Protect Real Medicare
Members of the DC37 Retirees Association rally outside the group’s Manhattan offices last year after AFSCME took over the organization and suspended officers opposed to the Medicare Advantage push. Photo/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
Maybe they thought nobody was watching?
A year after seizing control of the DC37 Retirees Association and suspending officers opposed to the ongoing Medicare Advantage push in NYC, the American Federation of State, County, & Municipal Employees—under the auspices of Administrator Ann Widger—has begun pumping out letters declaring the Retirees Association’s sudden and miraculous opposition to legislation aimed at protecting Traditional Medicare benefits.
“We need your help to stand up against legislation in the New York City Council that would put our premium-free health care coverage at risk and tries to create a divide between current city workers and retirees,” the letter states. “The fact is, we are all in this together. Intro. 1096 claims it would ‘preserve health care choice for retirees.’ The truth is that it would do little to preserve retiree health care.”
What that letter fails to say, however, is that there is no “we” behind it because DC37 Retirees Association members never voted on it—nor does it reveal that the entire organization has degenerated into a hollow “dictatorship” under the iron-fisted control of AFSCME Administrator Ann Widger and her more than $200,000 a year salary.
“Since the administratorship came into existence, they have abrogated the constitution of the association,” Neal Frumkin, suspended RA Vice-President of Inter-Union Relations told Work-Bites. “They have ‘membership meetings,’ but the members have no voice at those meetings. They don’t vote—and they can’t speak unless they are among a handpicked few who have been assigned to give reports at the meetings. It’s a one-way monologue.”
In reality, the DC37 Retirees Association has been an integral part of the retiree coalition successfully beating back the City of New York’s four-year campaign to strip municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits and force them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan that makes its money by denying patients care.
“It angers me,” Frumkin continued. “They suspended the democratically-elected officers, abrogated the constitution of the association, and without consulting any of the membership, they have taken it upon themselves to support placing retirees into the Medicare Advantage plan.”
Those Medicare Advantage opponents were working at their desks on Feb. 22, of last year when AFSCME swooped down on the DC37 Retirees Association’s Manhattan offices suspending the officers and locking everybody out of the place.
“They did not treat us like ‘brothers and sisters,’” Frumkin told Work-Bites at the time. “They treated us like dogs.”
Marianne Pizzitola, retired EMS worker and head of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, is also a DC37 retiree. She, too, characterizes DC37 Retirees Association membership meetings since the AFSCME takeover as autocratic, one-way “webinars.”
“You cant’ even talk to each other,” Pizzitola told Work-Bites. “You can only talk to [Widger]—and she will only answer the questions that she wants to. She is not the association, and she is violating the constitution of the DC37 Retirees Association by trying to force us into Medicare Advantage. She is not doing what the members want.”
Work-Bites made repeated attempts to reach AFSCME for comment on this story, but was unsuccessful.
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District Council 37 is the largest public employees union in New York City, and an AFSCME and AFL-CIO affiliate. For the last four years, its Executive Director Henry Garrido, has been helping to spearhead the City of New York’s ongoing campaign to strip 250,000 municipal retirees of their Traditional Medicare benefits and herd them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
The reasons behind the push for privatization go back to a Faustian bargain hatched during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration in which Garrido and the other heads of the Municipal Labor Council [MLC] agreed to throw retirees under the bus by erasing their Traditional Medicare benefits in exchange for some modest public sector raises.
That shady deal to upend the Medicare benefits retirees earned on the job, however, ostensibly flies in the face of the AFL-CIO’S official stance on strengthening Traditional Medicare. Last December, AFL-CIO Policy Director Candace Archer told Work-Bites that the organization representing some 15 million workers from 63 different unions, “strongly opposes any effort to reduce beneficiary choice, including the choice of enrolling in traditional Medicare.”
Archer further added, “We also strongly support the expansion of original Medicare so that beneficiaries choosing that option have the same range of beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage.”
But that just sounds like carefully crafted and ultimately empty rhetoric when you consider Garrido’s actions in New York City and AFSCME’s hostile takeover of the DC37 Retirees Association last year.
As Steve Zeltzer further points out, “The privatization of Medicare through Medicare Advantage is the intended outcome of the Affordable Care Act passed by the Obama Administration with the support of the entire AFL-CIO leadership.”
Not only have Medicare Advantage companies profited from taking over “tens of billions of dollars of the Medicare system,” Zeltzer adds, “but the AFL-CIO and many national unions have welcomed Medicare Advantage programs and have actually contributed to the privatization of Medicare. The unions have partnered with the insurance companies by offering financial incentives to their members if they drop Medicare and enroll in the privatized Medicare Advantage programs.”
Former Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO President Jeff Johnson and Retired Public Employees Council of Washington Executive Director Laurie Weidner, shared a similar analysis with Work-Bites back in 2023.
“It’s very, very layered,” Weidner said. “There’s money behind this.”
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None of that, however, has stopped municipal retirees from fighting back. Last summer, UFT retirees opposing the Medicare Advantage push and backing legislative efforts in the New York City Council to further protect their Traditional Medicare benefits, rose up and seized control of the union’s Retired Teachers Chapter. That victory, in turn forced UFT President Michael Mulgrew to officially pull his union’s support of the Medicare Advantage push.
That win, Frumkin says, shows just how out of touch the UFT leadership was with the desires of rank and file members.
“And I think that is also the case with DC 37 at this point,” Frumkin further told Work-Bites. “I think that the letter sent out does not reflect the anger of retired members of DC 37 who were never consulted, and whose needs in terms of medical coverage were never taken into consideration.”
On the contrary, Frumkin says it’s just Garrido and the MLC covering up for their astonishing failures as union leaders.
“This was simply a grab to facilitate the prior mismanagement on the part of the MLC in terms of the Health Stabilization Fund—and the fact that they have done nothing to fight to contain the cost of health care,” he said. “They apparently are more willing to fight against rank and file members and former members of the union than they are willing to fight against the city and the healthcare industry.”