By Joe Maniscalco

Union leaders backing the privatization of traditional Medicare benefits may appear oblivious to what they’re doing to the lives of municipal retirees, but do they understand what they’re doing to the Labor Movement overall? According to retirees fighting privatization in New York City — they’re going to “destroy Labor as we know it” and it’s up to retirees to “organize and protect Labor.”

“It wouldn’t have an impact on the Labor Movement if the top labor [leaders] would do the right thing. [But] if they start taking the benefit packages then, yes, it’s gonna have an issue because why would you take a city job if they promise you something, and at the end they’re just gonna take it away?” Michelle Robbins, a principal organizer with the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, told Work-Bites outside City Hall this week.

And why would anyone want to join a union, municipal retirees argue, if after a lifetime of paying dues and advancing union solidarity — the leadership can simply “sell off everything that they have” in retirement.

“That is a travesty — and that will cause the end of the Labor Movement. That is the problem,” Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees told Work-Bites. “And that is why we need to organize to protect Labor because the decisions they are making today are the wrong decisions. And this will cause Labor to move backwards. We’ve had many advancements in these decades, however, these decisions are going to destroy Labor as we know it.”

THE NATIONAL ISSUE NO ONE WANTS TO TALK ABOUT

The privatization of traditional Medicare is a national issue, but it’s also one that the AFL-CIO does not want to talk about.

Jeff Johnson, former president of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, has attempted to raise the alarm about profit-driven Medicare Advantage programs and the privatization of traditional Medicare with AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler herself, but to no avail.

“Twenty plus years of experience with Medicare Advantage has shown us that the privatization of Medicare has provided corporate America with the golden eggs and the goose that laid them,” Johnson told Work-Bites this week. “The Medicare system is being fleeced to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year through privatization. This comes at the cost of delays and denials of care for seniors. Most union retirees thought we were done battling corporate health care when we reached Medicare coverage.”

Johnson, who now heads up a group in Washington State fighting the privatization of traditional Medicare called Puget Sound Advocates for Retirement Action [PSARA], says if unions really want to help their retirees and other seniors, they should “fight for leveling the playing field by demanding the end to corporate fraud in Medicare and insisting that traditional Medicare has at least the same benefits and costs as are afforded Medicare Advantage programs.

“Do this and privatized Medicare will end,” he says.

Workers, Pizzitola says, have always been urged to unionize because they would be protected on the job and into the future.

“And for us, we knew our benefits were protected, not from just when we got on this job, but through our end of life,” said Pizzitola, who is also head of FDNY EMS Retirees Association. “For us to have lived up to our end of the bargain and then [union leaders] to cut short what we earned to finance themselves — when they are making much more money then we are in retirement, in employment — this is not fair.”

Back in March, Vermont State Labor, AFL-CIO President David Van Deusen blasted Medicare Advantage as “little more than a money making scheme for capitalist interests throughout the country” that “lowers standards of care, is fraught with problems, and dehumanizes coverage divisions, which puts the lives of retired union workers in jeopardy.”

“Any so-called labor leaders who turn their back on the needs and interests of the rank & file (be they active or reitred) and instead sides with the big capitalists in there efforts to generate private profit through the exploitation of workers must be understood as a Trojan Horse within the Labor Movement,” Van Deusen told Work-Bites. 

OUT-LEFTING THE LEFT

In the sorted world of duopoly politics, Labor’s support for the privatization of traditional Medicare is giving Republicans and other conservatives the golden opportunity to “out-left” the left — or whatever passes as the left.

The streets of New York City, as seen this week at the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees’ sidewalk press conference, have become a microcosm of this reality.

City Council Member Ari Kagan [R-47th District], accompanied by Council Members Joann Ariola [R-32nd District] and Vicki Paladino [R-19th District], got to openly mock DC 37 Executive Director and Municipal Labor Committee [MLC] leader Henry Garrdio  as a “union boss” for opposing legislation aimed at protecting traditional Medicare benefits and, as reported in the Daily News, attempting to strong-arm City Council members who don’t fall in line.

“I do not believe any of these excuses — it’s all bogus excuses,” Council Member — and former Democrat — Kagan said. “Also, unbelievable, unfair, totally  wrong, disgusting threats: ‘Oh, I’m union boss…I own your City Council…I own New York City…don’t tell us otherwise.’ What kind of union leader is this? You need to listen to the people of New York City.”

New York City municipal retirees battling to retain their traditional Medicare benefits have consistently stressed that their fight is a human rights issue — not a political one.

“And we are not gonna allow it to become a political fight, or our unions to bully those [City Council members]…they’re trying to intimidate the Council to not be behind us,” Pizzitola said. “The unions know what they are doing — they should have had our backs from the get-go.”