Undoing the Undemocratic Machine Messing With Workers And Retirees…
There is a dearth of democracy today—one that’s reflected in most every institution you want to name—from the New York City Council to your own union.
By Joe Maniscalco
New York City municipal retirees and home care workers heroically fighting for what they’ve already earned know the deck has been heavily stacked against them—so, why aren’t some of their staunchest allies willing to do anything about the systemic conditions underpinning that institutionalized inequity?
That’s a question we at Work-Bites have been pondering in the streets these past many months chronicling the fight to block New York City from pushing 250,000 municipal retirees into a disastrous privatized health insurance plan—and the parallel fight to end the virtual enslavement of home care workers compelled to work round-the-clock shifts at roughly half the pay.
Two separate pieces of legislation left to stultify inside the New York City Council—that celebrated august body hailed for being both women-led and the “most progressive” City Council to date—could have brought a halt to both examples of outrageous anti-worker abuses a long, long time ago—if said city council supported them.
But it hasn’t because meaningless gender distinctions and hollow left-right labels mean nothing when everybody in charge is just another willing cog in the undemocratic oligarchic machine designed and built to effectively manage the will of the unruly masses.
Reporting out of the The New York Post this past week, alleging New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams zapped constituent emails challenging a Gaza ceasefire resolution was aimed at portraying the head of the City Council as a phony liberal powerbroker more interested in virtue signaling and party politics than serving the will of the people.
If you’ve been following the ongoing struggle of New York City municipal retirees and home care workers, however, you already know, in fact, that the New York City Council largely operates as a modern-day fiefdom subject to the unofficial decrees of its speaker.
New York City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa [D-10th District] straight up told Work-Bites in September this is exactly the way things operate when she acknowledged the existence of a special “protocol” within the New York City Council, and declared her steadfast refusal to “cross” Speaker Adrienne Adams’ agenda.
As head of the Civil Service and Labor Committee, Council Member Carmen De La Rosa could have advanced Intro. 1099—pending legislation aimed at prohibiting the City of New York from reneging on its decades-old commitment to cover the Medigap costs associated with retirees’ Medicare benefits—anytime she chose. She simply refused to do so. There’s nothing in the rulebook that says Council Member De La Rosa couldn’t advance a bill out of her own committee—save the “protocol” existing within the New York City Council that says you don’t dare cross the speaker.
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams has similarly put the “No More 24 Act” on ice, despite City Council Member and lead sponsor Chris Marte [D-1st District] declaring in May that his bill banning round-the-clock shifts in the home care industry has enough support to pass the New York City Council if it were ever allowed onto the floor for a vote.
This obviously undemocratic and ugly abuse of power isn’t lost on anybody—but ask people about why it continues to go unchallenged and you get lots of sidewalk stammering and a startled deer-in-the-headlights stare.
In March, Downtown Independent Democrats President Richard Corman stood outside the gates of City Hall in a downpour lending full-throated support for the “No More 24” bill, but arguing that in every legislature “there’s a role to play for the leadership” and “there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Corman continued, “But the leadership has to follow what the people want…It’s really up to the council members themselves to demand that they want to have their voices heard. I think it’s perfectly natural that leadership manages the legislatures—I’m not gonna say any critique about democracy.”
Sorry, Richard, but from where we sit, there is a helluva lot wrong with that—because that so-called “leadership” is running amok on worker and retiree rights.
Corman further stressed the importance of grassroots organizing, saying that elected officials “look to us, I hope, to hear what’s important and then go act on it.”
“It’s up to the people make sure that the issues are there in front of our elected officials so that they can move and act on them,” he said.
Well, nobody in their right mind can ask more of the municipal retirees—many battling life-threatening diseases—who have spent precious years fighting back against the Medicare Advantage push. Nor can anybody ask more of the home care workers—some of the most marginalized people in this society—who have also spent precious years fighting back against corporate enslavement.
GOP City Council Member and Intro. 1099 cosponsor Vicki Paladino [R-19th District] also did some skating around the issue when Work-Bites asked her about the undemocratic inner workings of the New York City Council back in September. Instead, she expressed her reluctance to get into the “internal party politics that may be at work on the other side of the aisle.”
Of course, it’s not about what "may” be happening on the “other side of the aisle” is it? They all want that unilateral power when they get into office and are loathe to curb it in any way—even when they have to bite their own tongues in order to allow it to continue.
Earlier this month, retired City Council Member and New York State Supreme Court Justice Kathryn Freed also rallied alongside home care workers fighting to pass the “No More 24” bill, this time outside the Chinese-American Planning Council’s Lower East Side HQ.
“That’s one of the things the Speaker can do,” Freed told Work-Bites when asked about the unbridled power the speaker has to kill pro-worker legislation. “Just rationally, I don’t know how you change that. You have the head of the council—and they have more power than anyone else. They have the right to give out additional monies to the other council members, they can cut your funds.”
Yup. They can indeed.
Like Corman, Freed also further argued, “There’s a certain amount of power invested in the speaker—but the speaker also has to be aware of what’s going on.”
With all due respect to both Corman and Freed and all the work they are doing championing workers, as well as anyone else subscribing to this rationale—people in power do not have to “follow what the people want” or "be aware of what’s going on.”
All they have to do is spin just enough justification to provide plausible cover for their inaction, while at the same time trusting in law enforcement’s ongoing ability—and willingness—to keep street actions safely kettled and the traffic moving. That done, they don’t have to listen to anything but the demands of the machine that built them.
Working people can’t vote their way out of this mess if virtually every candidate in every race—whether they have that “D” or an “R” next to their name—is part of the same oligarchic machine and operates in exactly the same fashion.
It’s a cynical trick aimed at the gullible and highly conditioned still mindlessly consuming corporate news media like popcorn—a toxic lie that corrodes worker class power as surely as a seeping vat of battery acid dumped out onto the shop floor.
After a series of back-to-back-to-back-to-back losses in court banning the implementation of Medicare Advantage on New York City municipal retirees, Speaker Adrienne Adams started saying that the city needs to bring “closure” to the whole Medicare Advantage mess. But what does she really mean when all her refusal to allow Intro. 1099 to come to the floor for a vote has done is give Mayor Eric Adams more time to exhaust the courts and finally get a ruling that he wants?
This is a dearth of democracy—one that’s reflected in most every institution you want to name today—from the New York City Council to your own union—and quite frankly, the reason why so many are going to bed at night counting down the days until November despairing the death of the country they only thought they knew.
But, maybe if they hadn’t turned a blind eye to all those “parliamentarians,” “superdelegates,” Diebold machines—and any of the other myriad ways that have been used to dilute democracy over the past few decades—we wouldn’t all be facing that angst-ridden existential crisis.
Who’s been busting their butts making it easier to vote and run in elections? Who’s getting money out of politics and making elected officials more directly beholden to the electorate? Anybody presently in office? There’re certainly lots of people running around working hard 24/7 trying to accomplish the opposite of all those things.
Working class people everywhere need to band together in true solidarity and push hard to democratize every aspect of their lives and obliterate hierarchies wherever they’re encountered. If we’re not doing that, we are guaranteeing we get more of what we have right now. And much, much worse.
And maybe that’s okay with some, because when you get right down to it, there are far too many people out there who really don’t much care for democracy.
If you do believe in democracy, however, then you’re gonna wanna look to the retirees fighting hard to hang on to the Medicare benefits they’ve already earned. You’re gonna wanna look to the older immigrant woman of color in the home care industry refusing to be ripped off and exploited any longer.
Go ahead. It’s inspiring. And in the end, a lot more powerful than any cockamamie machine B.S.