Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
Retiree Advocate is doing a zoom on Sunday Nov. 6 7PM to address questions people may have and to expose the confusion created by the the joint operation of the city and some of the unions, led by Mulgrew in the UFT and DC 37, the largest components who dominate the MLC (Metropolitan Labor Committee) who make deals with the city that control our health care. We may not have all the answers but we have some answers. We are hoping to have Marianne Pizzitola join us but if she can't make it we have some knowledgeable people.
MORE is planning another zoom in the same issue a week later at the same time and Marianne is definitely going to be there.
Exposing the Adams/Mulgrew Threat to Our Healthcare: Untangling the Confusion
This Sunday, Nov 6 at 7PM, Retiree Advocate/UFT is holding a Zoom Info Meeting to share what we know - and what we don't know - regarding the current healthcare crisis in our unions.
Learn what role Mulgrew and other union leaders in the MLC have been playing in partnership with Mayor Adams and the Office of Labor Relations.
New information is coming in constantly and we are trying to stay up to date. This meeting will share info & analysis, and try to answer your questions.
Attendance will be limited to 100. Meeting will be recorded for those who cannot make it.
Here are some comments I gleaned from some of the listserve discussions after a district rep sent out an appeal to chapter leaders to get their staffs to call the city council to change the admin code. As Jonathan says in his current blog: Administrative Code 12-126 – Line by line:
The code today means:
“The City pays an amount equal to the cost of HIP”
The code if the Mulgrew/Nespoli/Adams amendment goes through will say:
The City pays the cost
of HIP, and no more than that, or else some other amount – and that
amount could be different for different groups of city workers, and
there is no limit on how low those amounts might be.
When you call your city council member, please explain this to them
as you urge them to protect workers and retirees, and reject the
amendment.
Comments from RA listserve:
It's
pure pap! All one has to do is read the amendment language. Your DR is
asking you to not believe your own eyes or use your own brain. The
amendment reaffirms nothing because Judge Frank's ruling changed
absolutely nothing. His ruling merely said that retirees are protected
from paying premiums, specifically on the now-dormant Medicare Advantage
Plus plan, because of price protections built into the city code.
It's not hard to understand the amendment. Just look at it. It does two things and two things only: First it strips
healthcare price protections, for ALL current and retired municipal
employees, by yanking those protections out of city law, and placing
them in the hands of OLR lawyers and union bosses. Second, it allows city bureaucrats to classify municipal employees into separate, as yet undefined, categories. That's a prospect that begs the creation of tiered, unequal levels of coverage for past and present city workers.
I bet your DR wouldn't wish that on her mother's health plan!
, or in the alternative,
This means, "What was said before this doesn't count."
in
the case of any class of individuals eligible for coverage by a plan
jointly agreed upon by the city and the municipal labor committee to be a
benchmark plan for such class,
This means,
"For anyone and everyone in city employment, the benchmark price -
formerly established as the cost of the HIP-HMO plan, and until now
protected by this law - can now be chosen by the MLC and OLR. We don't
need no stinkin' law, made by stinkin' elected legislators, to tell us
what to do! And if we want to, we can have multiple plans, and multiple
benchmark prices, for multiple classes of people, and we can change that
any time we like. So there!"
not to exceed the full cost of such benchmark plan as applied to such class.
This means, "When we say your brand new benchmark plan costs only ten bucks, but you want to stay in your old plan; the one that costs five hundred bucks - and that we will still offer because we believe in freedom of choice - no
problem! Just cough up the $490. But hey, if you want, you can have our
super-duper $5 or $8 plan for free! Because, you know, choice!"
And some Media links to articles:
An excellent article below from Work-Bites
Beware of the Mad Dash to Medicare Advantage
By Joe Maniscalco
Commentary
So, some of the most powerful people in town are warning the rest of us that the most pressing — the most urgent — the most vital issue — facing the City of New York right now is the need to immediately privatize healthcare for municipal retirees — or else. I dunno about you, but this kind of thing reminds me of that time working people were told we had to bail out the big banks.
Remember, it wasn’t that long ago when then U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson put up a scary countdown clock and told everyone in the country we had to cough up $700 billion to bail out the financial sector — right away — no time for talk — no deliberation — or all was lost.
Paulson got his money.
A few years later writing for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi called TARP — the Troubled Asset Relief Program — a “lush nightmare of unintended consequences” and “one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people.”
The City Council must enable budget-cutting new health
insurance options for retirees, warns Eric Adams’s chief labor
negotiator — or City Hall will eliminate existing insurance plans
1 comment:
Where is the video posted?
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