Voices of NYC Retirees: ‘People Are Gonna Leave As A Result Of This’

New York City municipal retiree Roberta Gonzalez has more fighting to do before she can start taking the trips she’s put off her entire working life. Photo by Joe Maniscalco

By Joe Maniscalco

After nearly 40 years working for the City of New York retired municipal employee Roberta Gonzalez expected to be traveling the world right about now.

“I always wanted to go to Israel,” the 70-year-old Sheepshead Bay resident told Work-Bites this week. “That was always something I put off to do when I retire — I wanted to go to Italy, I wanted to go to Spain, and I wanted to go to Israel.”

Instead of that, however, Gonzalez has remained a consistent presence at rallies and marches, fighting efforts to push New York City municipal retirees into a for-profit, privatized Medicare Advantage health insurance plan.

“It’s not just for me,” she says, “there are people so much worse off. That really strikes a chord with me.”

Gonzalez started working for New York City back in 1973, when she was just 20-years-old. She took a “myriad of civil service tests along the way,” worked late nights and weekends, got more education, became a manager and took jobs at the Department of Health and the Office of Emergency Management.

“I worked overtime without pay,” she says. “I was committed. It was a way to do good and make enough money to live.”

Her municipal career saw Gonzalez through the AIDS epidemic, the September 11, attacks on the World Trade Center, Anthrax, Hurricane Sandy — you name the crisis.

“You worked twenty-four-seven,” the Brooklynite says. “You didn’t look at time.”

In 2017, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. The thyroid cancer diagnosis landed three years after that.

“There are sixty-eight cancers associated with 9/11,” Gonzalez says, “and having worked down here, I’ve lost five floor-mates from 225 Broadway to cancer — salivary, kidney, pancreatic — I’m lucky to be standing here today talking to you. I feel very fortunate in that respect, but I also put my time in. I didn’t make a lot of money, I was a manager but managers don’t make a lot of money.”

Claims that the only way to save the city’s Health Insurance Stabilization Fund is to push municipal retirees out of traditional Medicare and into a for-profit privatized Medicare Advance health insurance plan don’t jibe well with Gonzalez’ life experience and what she knows about working for the City of New York.

She did a lot of grant writing and budget work during her municipal career, and says sloppy contracts alone cost the city oodles of cash.

In a 2018 letter to New York Presbyterian Hospital, for instance, Municipal Labor Committee Chair Harry Nespoli complained about skyrocketing fees and “requirements buried in the current contractual language with BlueCross BlueShield, including limitations on the ability to audit bills” that “serve to surreptitiously increase our costs and limit our options.”

“I know that there’s money that’s hidden away, that’s not accountable,” Gonzalez says. “The city writes contracts using a boiler plate; some of the contracts that were written a few years ago, allowed Emblem Health to not have to resolve any outstanding issues — budget issues, payment issues — nothing. They were paid. Nobody took money back — nobody resolved any issues. That’s just one contract that I know about — imagine all the other contracts.”

With city agencies already experiencing staffing shortages, Gonzalez, like other municipal workers, fears stripping retirees of their traditional Medicare benefits will have an “absolutely horrific impact on the city.”

“People are gonna leave as a result of this,” she says. “It’s eroding all of the services that the city can provide. People probably haven’t felt it as much — yet. But it’s gonna permeate everything.”

In the meantime, Gonzalez’ long-held plans to travel the wider world remain on hold.

“I’ve got a couple of credit cards that still work, so I will do it,” she says. “But I’m terrified — I’m terrified to leave the situation and not be involved in it, and see it through to its conclusion. I feel like I’m standing on a precipice.”