By Steve Wishnia

About 50 retired city workers, some with canes, a few with walkers, and some wearing prop “screws” going through their heads, made their way to the Brooklyn Bridge this morning for a face-off with New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

They had been protesting near City Hall against the mayor’s plan to strip them of their traditional Medicare coverage and push them into a private Medicare Advantage plan — with the theme “Stop Screwing Retirees” — when word came that Hizzoner was appearing at the dedication of a vest-pocket park called “The Arches” on the north side of the bridge offramp.

“This is disgusting, what the mayor’s doing,” retired Department of Health manager Roberta Gonzalez told Work-Bites. “They’re taking away our pension and giving it away to a private contractor.”

Health care is personal for her, Gonzalez says: She has had “two cancers and a bunch of other stuff” from being exposed to toxic dust after the 9/11 attacks, when she was working to help restore city services in the area.

Other protesters spoke of their own experiences or read testimony from other retirees, saying that they had paid into Medicare with every check they got, that fewer doctors and facilities accept Medicare Advantage, especially out of state, and that privatized coverage creates barriers to care, such as by requiring that the insurer authorize it in advance.

The marchers turned left as Park Row curved under the bridge, on a sidewalk between the wall of its arch and a concrete road barrier topped with chain-link fence. When they emerged into the light, police quickly blocked their path with metal barricades, and threatened to give them a summons for using a bullhorn without a permit.

“We shall not be screwed,” the marchers sang to Adams, to the tune of “We Shall Overcome.” “We shall not be screwed — by you.”

A city representative eventually told the marchers they would be allowed to go to the park after the mayor had left. They chanted “Mayor Adams, hands off our health care.”

“I hope he heard us,” Sarah Shapiro of the Cross-Union Organizing Committee [CROC] told Work-Bites after the rally.

As of Sept. 1, almost all municipal retirees will be automatically pushed into an Aetna Medicare Advantage plan unless they opt out and pay for their own Medicare premiums. Many protesters felt betrayed by the mayor, the union leaders pushing the plan, and the City Council for not enacting a law to block the change.

“I have spent my entire retirement fighting the city for benefits we were promised,” said United Federation of Teachers member Michelle Rayvid, who taught English as a second language for 40 years. “I don’t think we should have to pay the price for Michael Mulgrew making backhanded deals.”

The UFT president, along with Henry Garrido of District Council 37 and Sanitationmen leader Harry Nespoli, who chairs the Municipal Labor Committee [MLC], agreed to privatization on the grounds that it would achieve $600 million in savings on health costs they promised in a 2018 contract agreement.

Organizers expected several City Councilmembers to attend, but Christopher Marte (D-Manhattan) was the only one who showed up.

The current Council has been touted as the most progressive in history, Marte told the rally, but “when we allow corporations like Aetna to make profit off the backs of city retirees, we are not progressive.” He called health-care privatization “the biggest fight in the budget.”

Marte did not want to speak on the record about reports that Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is pressuring members not to oppose privatization. He said Councilmember Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) is preparing to introduce legislation that would require the city to offer retirees the option of staying on traditional Medicare without having to pay premiums.

The bill as drafted would add two sentences to Section 12-126 of the city administrative code. “In order to preserve retiree health care choice,” it says, the city shall offer retirees “at least one Medigap plan with benefits equivalent to or better than those available to City retirees and their dependents as of December 31, 2021.” It adds that it would not impair unions’ ability to negotiate the terms and conditions of employment for their members.

A spokesperson for Councilmember Barron said she did not know when he would introduce the measure, but that they are “working on it.”

“Government is responsible to protect all workers…. Our budget is a moral document,” DC37 retiree Michelle Keller, president of the New York City chapter of the Coalition of Labor Union Women, told the rally. Union leaders agreed to Medicare Advantage, she added, but “we are the ones who will suffer…. This is not Medicare.”