NYC Retirees to UFT Prez: How Do You Spell ‘H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y’, Michael?
UFT President Michael Mulgrew [back] rallies with Civil Service and Labor Committee Chair Carmen De La Rosa and other New York City Council members on the steps of City Hall last week.
By Joe Maniscalco
UFT President Michael Mulgrew wants members of the New York City Council to introduce and pass new legislation giving hard-working paraprofessionals a sorely-needed $10K salary boost. But hold on, if those same City Council people are treating pending legislation protecting the Traditional Medicare benefits of municipal retirees like an ugly green hunk of Kryptonite—why are they rallying behind this effort?
Intro. 1096—the bill aimed at stopping Mayor Eric Adams from stripping 250,000 municipal retirees of the Traditional Medicare benefits they earned on the job and pushing them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan—still has fewer than 10 sponsors. That’s largely because DC37 Executive Director Henry Garrido and the rest of the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] have been running around town telling everyone the measure violates collective bargaining rights and is illegal.
Well, if that’s the rationale, what makes a bill giving New York City paraprofessionals a $10,000 salary increase while totally skirting collective bargaining perfectly fine and legal? What exactly is the distinction here?
That’s the same question New York City retirees who’ve spent the last four years valiantly fighting two different mayors hellbent on herding them into a Medicare Advantage plan that would make Donald Trump and "Project 2025’s” authors very happy are asking this week.
“It’s ironic the UFT is lobbying the council to bypass the collective bargaining process available to them—and have the legislature provide a non-pensionable cash sum to deserving paras while Mulgrew’s staff is currently lobbying against the Retirees bill to protect their Medicare benefits they attempted to liquidate in retirement—a cohort that can’t collectively bargain,” New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees Marianne Pizzitola told Work-Bites. “It’s probably safe to say the unions won’t like this move, but from a retiree standpoint, this move won’t help these underpaid professionals in retirement because it can’t be applied to their pension when they need it most.”
When asked for comment, a UFT spokesperson described the $10,000 boost Mulgrew is advocating as the “Para Pay Index” and said it would be placed “outside collective bargaining.”
“The was a deliberate decision,” the UFT spokesperson told Work-Bites in an email. “That was a deliberate decision. Our legal counsel was clear that any legislation that touches on the terms, conditions or benefits of collective bargaining would be illegal.”
Pushed for further clarification, the UFT spokesperson added, “The payment is not part of their salary, and is not pensionable. Since the payment is based on its own index, it is not subject to future collectively bargained increases. Instead it is a recognition by the City that its practice of pattern bargaining has created an ever increasing wage gap.”
Interestingly, many paraprofessionals fighting hard to lift up salaries, dismiss the proposed “Para Pay Index” as “nothing more than an election-year stunt” from Michael Mulgrew and his ruling Unity Caucus and “not the real, pensionable raises paras deserve.”
“If the city has money now, why didn’t we get real raises in our contract?” Marie Wausnock, Fix Para Pay co-founder and UFT Paraprofessional Executive Board Member said in a statement. “This is a pattern. Mulgrew ignored retirees until they voted out his handpicked candidate. He ignored members struggling with healthcare costs until it became a liability. Now, he’s scrambling to buy para votes after years of neglect.”
According to Wausnock and Fix Para Pay, Mulgrew’s proposed legislation was hatched without consulting elected para representatives, fails to address ongoing issues, including inadequate pensions, LODI access, and fair longevity pay—and comes with no guarantees.
“The hypocrisy of Mulgrew's claim that his (conceptual) legislation to give paraprofessionals non-pensionable bonuses will not affect collective bargaining rights, while laws that protect the health benefits of city workers—such as Administrative Code 12-126 and the proposed Intro 1096—threaten collective bargaining rights, make one's head spin with cognitive dissonance,” UFT Retired Teachers Chapter President Bennett Fischer told Work-Bites.
Fischer acknowledges the common tactic of using signing bonuses to help ensure the ratification of municipal contracts, but he also sees the emergence of a troubling new pattern that could have profound implications for New York City civil servants.
“I doubt that paras are against $10K bonuses and I hope they get them,” Fischer said. “But there is an emerging pattern that concerns me. The last UFT contract not only included a one-time signing bonus, it also included recurring, non-pensionable ‘retention’ bonuses. I fear that partially-pensionable wage increases are becoming the new pattern in NYC public-sector bargaining.”
The New York City Department of Eduction employs somewhere around 28,000 paraprofessionals throughout the public school system. Entry level paraprofessionals providing instructional support to students earn less than $30,000 a year and no more than $18.50 an hour, according to Fix Para Pay.
New York City’s minimum wage, meanwhile, currently sits at $16.50 an hour. Paying paras just a couple of bucks more than that has helped create 1,600 vacancies throughout the system.
"The barrier to paying paraprofessionals more money is not the city’s lack of money,” Unity Caucus Chair LeRoy Barr told Work-Bites. “They had it then and they have it now. The barrier is pattern bargaining. For paraprofessionals, pattern bargaining is not working. Our City Council leaders see the injustice and are trying to work with us for a solution that would, if passed, result in annual recurring $10,000 payments to paraprofessionals.”
Mulgrew stood on the steps of City Hall on Jan. 30, alongside several City Council members—including Civil Service and Labor Chair Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District] and Education Committee Chair Rita Joseph [D-10th District]—touting the proposed legislation, which Pizzitola further dismisses as an “end run around collective bargaining—while the council won’t touch our bill.”
What do those same elected City Council members think of the “hypocrisy” involved in advocating for a $10,000 salary boost that’s supposedly way “outside collective bargaining,” while simultaneously suppressing a retiree bill in large part because it allegedly violates the very same collecting bargaining rights?
They’re not talking. Work-Bites made repeated attempts to reach Council Members De La Rosa, Joseph and others for comment on this story, but those attempts have all been ignored.
Council Member De La Rosa last week characterized Mulgrew’s proposed $10,000 boost for paras as an “investment” and said the upcoming budget should “center the most vulnerable New Yorkers."
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams [D-28th District] has been a steadfast opponent of intro. 1096 and consistently blocked discussion of the bill on the floor, insisting instead that the fight between Mayor Adams and retirees must be decided in court—where retirees keep winning—and Hizzoner keeps appealing.
She’s also on the record lamenting the “prolonged process in the courts” and insisting the City of New York needs “closure on this issue that addresses the concerns of all parties.”
So, where does she stand on Mulgrew’s proposed $10,000 boost for paras?
"Paraprofessionals are critical part of our public school system's ability to provide mandated services to students with disabilities. Those who care for our children should always be paid fairly,” a City Council spokesperson told Work-Bites this week. “There is currently no introduced legislation to review. If a bill is introduced, it will go through the legislative process.”
After stifling intro. 1096, as well as prior retiree legislation also aimed at protecting Traditional Medicare benefits from privatization—many are wondering what that “legislative process” might possibly look like.
"I wonder how Speaker Adams and her legal counsel can justify superceding the Mayor's legal authority to negotiate collective bargaining agreements for this very underpaid bargaining unit while using the same rationale for not superceding the Mayor in providing health care to retirees who by definition are not part of a bargaining unit represented by the MLC,” Council of Municipal Retiree Organizations President Stu Eber told Work-Bites.
Eber further expressed his hope that “Mr. Mulgrew is successful in sidestepping the Administration,” and suggested that “Mr. Garrido and Speaker Adams do the same for the thousands of DC 37 members whose poverty level salaries historically entitle them to SNAP, day care, HEAP and other income maintenance programs.”
“And both leaders should immediately ask the Speaker to support intro. 1096 to protect retiree's Medicare benefits that are not protected by or subject to collective bargaining,” Eber added.
Council Member Joann Ariola [R-32nd District] is one of just nine sponsors who’ve signed onto intro. 1096. But even her support is tepid at best—and still echos Speaker Adams’ stated opposition.
“Intro 1096 is important to the retirees, they deserve to maintain the healthcare they were promised,” Council Member Ariola recently told Work-Bites. “Although I support the bill, I also believe that this matter is best fought and won in the court system, which the retirees have been successful in doing. The belief that the case is best made in court is likely the reason many of my colleagues are not signing on.”
As for Mayor Adams, he continues to push Medicare Advantage on retirees despite a long string of court decisions blocking those efforts. The administration also released a statement recently saying that it “look[s] forward to discussing all of the [UFT’s] economic demands—in the next round of collective bargaining.”