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!
Sterling (Roberson) intentionally never read or mentioned the resolves in this proposed resolution … INTENTIONALLY.
Hundreds of delegates on the phone voted on a resolution they never read, had access to or were fully informed about.
This is very much Unity’s modus operandi — to co-opt policies that the rank and file is clamoring for in order to WATER IT DOWN.
Examples:
1. They were FOR Medicare Advantage before the lawsuits by NYC Retirees made it untenable for their attempts to privatize the traditional Medicare plan.
2. They saw that members wanted to be able to ratify agreements with changes to their healthcare … so they added a healthcare committee to maintain control and only supported the DA making these decisions.
I wanted to get this fake turn to support 1008 by Mulgrew and the clear signal that Sterling will be running for CL of the RTC on the table before I delve into the RTC maelstrom.
*****Fix Retiree Benefits is organizing a delegate slate for the RTC election but is still open to working in a coalition for one slate.
Also - I have been removed from moderating the RA listserve where criticism of RA will be censored. It is no longer reliable.
Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026
A candidate for RTC Chapter Leader
Last week I went to three meetings and a faux Funeral for UFT Opposition to 1008, after future Unity candidate for RTC chapter leader Sterling Roberson followed his script in "supporting" 1008 which they had been claiming violated collective bargaining, the Taylor Law, and the pooper scooper law. But then again, UFT leaders rarely pick up the poop they leave.
There were actually 5 meetings over two weeks and maybe some progress towards a united slate, but the train leaving the station is picking up steam. There's too much to report in this one post, so there will be a follow-up. (My head is spinning. I wish I could write as fast as Arthur - I used to but aging brain cells, you know.)
Since last week over 60 people have registered to run for delegate with Fix Retiree Benefits. CLICK HERE to run for delegate with Fix Retiree Benefits. The goal is 300.
Some background on one-slate progress
A group of RA dues-paying members were unhappy when RA Organizers presented a proposal for the creation of a 13 member election committee that gave FRB 3 out of 13 slots at a raucous Sept. 22 RA general membership meeting attended by around 40 members. The general feeling was that the 10-3 proposal would seriously damage the prospects for one slate.
Also of concern was the manner in which the meeting was conducted, with charges of lack of democracy when demands to put it to a vote were ignored, as one RA dues-paying attendee pointed out:
You cannot seriously think that creating a 13 member committee, composed of 10 RA representatives and only 3 from Fix Retiree Benefits, chosen by RA, is a fair and legitimate proposal for creating a joint slate! ... it appears to be a proposal created with the intention of having it rejected by FRB.... Many, perhaps most, of those who attended the RA membership meeting on Sept 22 were opposed to the way this committee was formed and were denied a vote on it. A democratic process on our side might have resulted in a better outcome.
The RA 15 member Organizing committee (steering) went ahead anyway and notified three men associated with FRB on Sept. 27 (FRB core members are majority women), inviting them to a meeting on Sept. 28. The next day Bennett Fischer offered to let FRB choose the three. This was the first official contact with the FRB since last May. The official FRB response, while leaving open the one-slate possibility, was:
The RA Organizers (their 15-member steering) proposal fundamentally recreated the concept of a an election committee that would run the election and vet candidates and the 3 FRB people would lose every vote when there was no agreement. We learned from our experience with ABC that there is a more dynamic way to run an election than we've seen from the legacy caucuses. A rigid structure would harm the ability to win. If there is an agreement to run one slate, I believe the RA and FRB crowds should be free to run their own versions of the campaign. But that's my personal opinion, not yet that of FRB.
The train was pulling out but there was still hope to hop on if the dissident RA members could pressure the leadership of RA into an equitable agreement. The pushback on working with Marianne Pizzitola was still intense and we even heard that one member of the RA Org had said if we dropped her they could agree to a 50-50 split. Protests that she was a key figure in our win two years ago were deflected with: but this is another election and we're incumbents and much better known in the retiree chapter. I don't agree, but that's for another time.
A mixed group met up after the Oct. 1 NYHA event.
An ad hoc meeting after the Oct. 1 NYHA meeting was open and frank and offered some hope and followed by a larger meeting after the RTC general meeting on Oct. 13, offering even more hope. We aimed at another meeting after the RTC meeting on Oct. 13.
The Oct. 13th meeting - Part 2 coming soon. (It is written but if I included it here you would be reading a tome. Actually, this alone is a tome.)
Concerned that divisions between Retiree Advocate and Fix Retiree Benefits would widen to the point of no return, a group of retirees I've termed "One-Slaters" are begging everyone to come together in a united slate to keep Unity from winning back the RTC chapter.
There is a sense of desperation and panic that if the chapter is handed back to Unity, they will use their control to find new and creative ways to reduce our healthcare or raise our fees, but this time, having learned some lessons from losing so badly in 2024, will do so in a much smarter and slicker manner and make sure Unity will never lose control again.
One of Unity's first lessons from that loss was to degrade and disparage and make Marianne Pizzitola of NYCOPSR, who had so much to do with getting retirees to vote against Unity, toxic. (Analogy to Corp Dem obsession with Hassan Piker). Unfortunately, some of the very people she helped put in control of the RTC seem to buy the same anti-Marianne Unity line.
They had a different tune as per this June 16, 2024 NY Post report on the RTC election:
UFT insurgents credited Marianne Pizzitola, a retired FDNY emergency medical specialist and current president of the Organization of Public Service Retirees, Inc., with rallying citywide worker opposition to the Medicare Advantage shift.
Boy, how things have changed since June, 2024 when members of Retiree Advocate (me included at the time) celebrated the massive win with Marianne Pizzitola the day we won. Once in power, RA began to back away from giving her credit and began to brag about how it was THEIR organizing that won the election with just a little bit of help from Marianne, fake news.
By the way, the role played by Arthur Goldstein in that campaign is also undervalued. Arthur now has almost 7,000 supporters on his substack. Some of his recent posts, critical of RA, have perturbed the one-slaters and I have links to them below.
The One-Slaters argue for a united slate by any means necessary, even to the extent of downplaying participation of Marianne and urging suppressing criticism of RA and RTC leaders. Another concern is a willingness to accept the same leadership personnel and structure, which many of them admit is a problem but they are willing to bite the bullet in the name of a united front.
The One-Slaters are unhappy when RA or RTC is criticized, feeling that would make RA less likely to want to work with critics. But is was clear to many that RA never had the intention of sharing power with FRB or anyone else not on their inside game. Yet, we have tried to stay in the one-slate lane despite the repeated "no interest" messaging from RA.
Election conversations have been accelerating, recently at the Sept. 29th RTC Ex Bd meeting and the RTC Health Committee NY Health Act meeting on Oct. 1.
This was the first time many of the key players on all sides in the RTC were meeting in person. There were no food fights but there were intense discussions over the one slate idea and the issues dividing us. What I found interesting was many of the one-slaters agree with FRB criticism but don''t want to talk about the issues, only wanting a united slate by any means necessary. They want a papering over of differences -- win first, fight later.
They are pushing to have an open meeting of all parties, including non-aligned.
I can see their point and remain open to further discussions, especially with independents and RA dissident dues-payers.
Dues-paying members of RA, unhappy with the leadership, are keeping hope alive that they can pressure the RA Org into some agreement. I will publish some of their comments next time, but with every passing day, the train is speeding up.
====
Arthur and I are quoted in the NY Post article of June 16, 2024
“This is a tale of a massive shift in voting sentiment amongst retirees,” UFT activist Norm Scott said of the election results. “Can the same shift occur in the general election next year?”
Arthur Goldstein, vice-chair-elect of the retiree chapter, said, “We have taken our United Federation of Teachers from the clutches of those who thought Eric Adams’ budget and/or Aetna’s profits were more important than our health.
“We have broken the bonds placed upon us by ostensible leaders, union bosses to whom our health was not even an afterthought.”
Here are a few more blasts from the past:
This June 24, 2024 from The City Reporter is self-explanatory
“The courts have spoken. My members have spoken,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. Left unsaid is how else unions might find $600 million in annual cost savings.
This March 21, 2023 City Reporter article delves into the petition a bunch of us outside the normal caucus structure organized - this was shortly before James Eterno's stroke and he was actively involved in planning this. We ended up with 12k signatures and in some ways we dropped the ball. Ironically, when we won the election some of us proposed bringing the issue of a membership vote up at the first RTC meeting but the RTC Ex Bd changed it from a membership vote to a DA vote and of course the UFT leadership quashed it. I would say that was an early rift.
Nine for them, three for us. Echoes of UFT/Unity election committee meetings where they always get three for one. But then again, Retiree Advocate channeling Unity behavior has been striking.
Here is the response to a meeting from Fix Retiree Benefits that I and two others were invited to that we will not be attending. It's self-explainable. I'm scheduling this post for 6 PM, the precise time the meeting they called without consulting us is due to begin.
The three invited Fix Retiree Benefits members will not attend.
In June 2024, UFT retirees overturned 40 years of control of the UFT Retired Teachers Chapter (RTC) by Unity Caucus, and won elections for 10 RTC Officers, 15 Executive Board members and 300 representatives to the UFT Delegate Assembly. Retirees revolted over the old Unity RTC leadership’s support for the attempt to move us out of traditional Medicare and into a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan. Receiving 63% and over 17,000 retiree votes, the Retiree Advocate (RA) slate prevailed in the 2024 election, with the strong support of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees (NYCOPSR) led by Marianne Pizzitola, who spoke to a standing ovation at the very first RTC Meeting not under Unity control in October, 2024.
As a result of that massive victory, UFT leader Michael Mulgrew backed off the Medicare Advantage demand, but has refused to support retirees on City Council Bill 1008 — which would grant retirees permanent protection under the law; nor has the UFT Unity leadership supported the elimination of co-pays for UFT retirees.
Over the past two years, differences have arisen within the RTC chapter between Retiree Advocate and a newly formed group, Fix Retiree Benefits— which has focused on protecting and expanding healthcare benefits and continuing the strong alliance with Marianne Pizzitola and NYCOPSR as major factors in the attempt to keep Unity from re-taking control of the RTC.
Representatives of Fix Retiree Benefits had two meetings with RA in April and May 2026, with a proposal for the two groups to work together in the RTC elections. Fix Retiree Benefits proposed a 50-50 split of the 25 RTC Officers and Executive Board, as well as the 300 Delegate Assembly representatives. A proposed June follow-up meeting was cancelled by RA with no further response.
On Sunday, Sept. 27, three core members of Fix Retiree Benefits were informed via email by RTC Chapter Leader and RA Organizer Bennett Fischer that they had been placed on a 13-member RTC election committee, without being consulted in advance. This 13-member RTC election committee was formed unilaterally by RA. The committee also included six RA Organizing Committee members and three others with known affiliations to the RA Organizers, with no input from Fix Retiree Benefits or independents organizing for the RTC election. In the email sent to the three individuals affiliated with Fix Retiree Benefits, the election committee meeting was called for Monday, September 28 at 6 P.M.
An email to one of the three members from Fix Retiree Benefits was sent to the wrong email address. You can read his response here:
This formation of a 13-member “election committee” is in essence the response by RA to our original proposal from April and May, which was for an even split of Officers, Executive Board, and Delegate Assembly Representatives, and to for a united slate in the next RTC election.
Aside from the fact that Fix Retiree Benefits was not even given the courtesy of being asked what representatives we would choose, plus the fact that Fix Retiree Benefits, a group with a strong presence of women (two of whom had already met with RA during negotiations in April and May), did not have any of them considered for the committee by RA; the very nature of a proposal to set up a “pre-election” committee in which RA members would more than double the representation of Fix Retiree Benefits is objectionable. Presumably, this 13-member committee would then determine the candidates running on the slate.
This proposal by RA is clearly one-sided and is not acceptable to those who have been critical of the manner in which the RA leadership has been running the RTC, and would amount to a continuance of the same policies that have caused a large number of retirees to reconsider voting for RA again.
Only a slate decided on and reflective of the RTC membership will have a chance to defeat Unity once again. A serious proposal would respond directly to the issue of how each group (as well as independents) would be represented on a unified slate.
While representation among the Officers, Executive Board and Delegates is important and must be resolved, there are other concerns that must be addressed. For one, what should be contained in the platform of a united slate? What issues should be emphasized? Another issue is how do we organize to get Inro 1008 passed, and how do we work with other groups to lobby for its passage?
Given these conditions, none of the three Fix Retiree Benefits members intend to attend RA’s election committee meeting. However, we remain open to working not only with RA but with the vast number of non-affiliated RTC members who wish to actively participate in the RTC election.
The joint-slate proposal presented by Fix Retiree Benefits to Retiree Advocate in April and May is below:
1. Protect our promised retiree healthcare. We must unite with other municipal union retirees, and work in solidarity with the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees and its leader Marianne Pizzitola in the fight to pass City Council Intro 1008.
2. Fight to eliminate the onerous and coercive copays. Improve retiree UFT Welfare Fund benefits. Provide drug coverage for retirees and their dependents, as in all other municipal unions, and improve dental coverage.
3. Protect our pension benefits. Do not let the city balance its budget on the backs of retirees. Fight in the State to increase COLAs. Enable retirees to vote for TRS teacher trustees.
4. Oppose Unity Caucus leadership, when they pit active members against retirees or engage in undemocratic or other actions that cause harm to the membership.
We wish to run a democratic RTC, accountable to all its constituents, Medicare and pre-Medicare, inclusive of paraprofessionals and all other titles.
Fix Retiree Benefits proposed the following governing structure for the joint slate:
Each group (RA and FRB) would each nominate 150 of the chapter’s 300 delegates.
Each group (RA and FRB) would equally share the 10 officer positions (5 each).
Each group (RA and FRB) would share the 15 Executive Board positions, with the group nominating the chapter leader candidate choosing 7 of the 15 members of the Exec Board, and the other group choosing 8 members.
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It is deeply disappointing but not at all surprising to see RA leadership behaving in this way. It seems their only takeaway from the 2025 officers election, in which they lost the retiree vote by a 3-to-1 margin, was to become even more embittered and entrenched.
Despite TRIPLING the retiree vote received by RA in the 2025 election, the union activists involved in Fix Retiree Benefits have offered to split the RTC slate evenly (50/50) and to work together with RA to develop a platform. That offer from Fix Retiree Benefits was presented in good faith and in the spirit of union solidarity, and it still stands. RA should take the offer, and we should all get to work in defeating Unity, whose nearly 70-year obsessive control of the UFT has resulted in 20+ years of diminishing returns for all UFT members.
The iron law of institutions
states that people who run an organization care more about keeping
their own power than helping the organization succeed....political analysts use this concept to explain why progressive or
liberal groups, labor unions, and activist spaces sometimes prioritize
internal control, ideological conformity, or leadership survival over
winning broader elections or achieving their stated social goals.
The institutional Dem Natl Comm are so threatened by a statewide win by a progressive in Michigan, they spend more time attacking him than his Republican opponent --- thus you see the name Hassan Piker being raised
in every media, both Republican and Democrat circles. Dem Doyone Neera Tanden who heads the misnamed Center for American Progress (I prefer Regress) had 15 tweets about Piker over two days. She'd rather see a Republican win in
Michigan and lose the Senate because a win by Abdul will negate her influence and power. Tell her to GFH with a donation to him.
Keep these points in mind while I switch gears.
The first EdNotesOnline post on Aug. 27, 2006:
An attentive class size of three
Sadly, all 3 cats are gone, the last one in 2011 - but we did have two more after that, but they are gone too -- so, we are catless for the first time in 55 years.
Monday, August 31, 2026 - Celebrating 20 years of blogging.
Education Notes has been around in print and online for almost 30 years. I began publishing the print editions in 1998 but they are not online yet.
An item I published 20 years ago (see below) turns out to have some relevance to the sturm und drang taking place in the world of UFT retirees over the differences between the Retiree Advocate/New Action tandem and Fix Retiree Benefits. The discussion broke out in the RTC Ex Bd and beyond on some listserves when a group of independents unaffiliated with either group, seeing a Unity retake of the RTC as an existential threat to retiree healthcare, began demanding there be a united slate in the spring 2027 RTC election.
RA/New Action group dominates the 25 member RTC officers and Ex Bd with 9 out of 10 officers (Arthur Goldstein of FRB is the only non RA member) and also occupy 6 of the 15 EB. Given the level of outreach to a broader level of retirees, with the help of Marianne Pizzitola's NYCOPSR, FRB is asking for a 50-50 split of the 25 seats with the odd position going to the group that doesn't choose the chapter leader. The response has not been encouraging, indicating that the current RTC leadership is happy with the status quo and wants to maintain control.
(See above, The iron law of institutions).
One concern with the RTC leadership over the past two years has been a lack of pushback against the UFT/Unity leadership - the subservience to Mulgrew
and Unity Caucus retirees who are scheming to take back the chapter and
are getting little resistance.
Recently
RA put out a proposed platform with no mention of Unity Caucus, who they
are supposedly running against. There's a history at play here - the long-time dozen year relationship between NAC/RA and Unity.
I helped form the Independent Community of Educators in late 2003 to run in the 2004 election because of the NAC deal with Unity - details another time - but search this blog for New Action if you want to know more. Let's go back 20 years to August 31, 2006 when I included an item on the upcoming UFT elections in the spring of 2007 https://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2006/08/ednotes-online-august-31-2006.html, with this snippet.
With
New Action not revealing their intentions at this time other than to
give strong indications they will not run with the ICE-TJC slate despite
an offer that was made to have them join the slate, there is an opening
for them to play a spoiler for Unity by dividing the opposition vote
and allowing Unity to regain control of 100% of the Executive Board. Of
course, New Action could choose not to run at all but without some
statement from New Action affirming that position, ICE-TJC must now go
on the assumption New Action might agree to be a stalking horse for
Unity. ICE-TJC welcomes individuals in New Action who wish to run with
them.
What is old is new again.
The co-chairs of New Action 20 years ago were Michael Shulman and Jonathan Halabi, both leaders of the current Retiree Advocate (Shulman is still co-chair of NAC) and are among the 10 officers of the RTC and viewed as the major resistors to running a united slate in the RTC election to prevent Unity from regaining control of the chapter.
(See The iron law of institutions).
New Action spawned Retiree Advocate over 30 years ago and reps from both ran in UFT elections in cooperation with Unity by endorsing Randi for president in 2004 and 2007 and Mulgrew in 2010 and 2013 and ran on the Unity slate in 2007, 2010 and 2013, getting their reps elected to the Exec Bd with Unity votes, including both Shulman and Halabi.
While I criticized RA and NAC during those years, we made peace in 2016 when they left the Unity fold and I and others connected to ICE and MORE joined RA and worked hard in the election 2 years ago. We also worked together in the 2022 UFT elections. I make these points to those who claim we are driven apart by personal pique and egos. If we worked together over almost 10 years despite differences, we are still willing to see Unity as the common enemy.
And therein lies the rub. NAC and RA people often chastise critics for pointing to Unity as an enemy. "They are just fellow union members," they say. "Sure," I reply. "Fellow union members who advocated for taking us out of Medicare." If they had succeeded, with my current medical condition I'm not sure I'd still be alive. Sorry, people who are willing to risk our lives are enemies.
Like
I said, some issues never go away.
=====
Both Halabi and Shulman are prominently mentioned in a recent post by Arthur Goldstein, the only one of the 10 RTC officers not in the Retiree Advocate steering committee.
One of their leaders opposes 1096/1008. Another criticizes aligning with Marianne Pizzitola.
There’s been a flurry of mail directed to RTC Executive Board
members, urging we build a united front to fight Unity in the next
retiree election. That’s a good idea, though not a new one. I started
contacting people the day after the last election to try and organize.
My friends at Fix Retiree Benefits
(FRB), an offshoot of ABC, agreed. We decided we’d have a better chance
of beating Unity if we ran cooperatively with Retiree Advocate (RA).
Newly formed ABC got 9,000 retiree votes last year, while RA went from
17,000 to 3,000. Unity edged us all out with 13,000. This told me that
we needed to put aside our differences.
I thought of a
way we could run together—a way that, to my mind, was generous. Rather
than demand we get the three to one representation election results
indicated, we’d split it right down the middle, 50-50. My FRB friends agreed.
After
a year of no response, RA met with us twice. Both times, they said they
had no authority to make agreements, and no proposals of their own.
They canceled our third meeting, scheduled for June. Now RA’s Jonathan
Halabi, who openly opposes 1096/1008, has emailed a proposal for
something his caucus calls an “Open Election Slate.”
It’s
open to the degree that any RTC member may apply. However, RA continues
their policy of keeping total control in the hands of their now
15-member steering committee, in that “All nominees will be vetted by the Committee.”(Correction—They say they are forming a committee to do that, and it will not necessarily be the steering committee.) That’s a far cry from running cooperatively.
And
Marianne Pizzitola who has lead the NYC Retirees over the past 5 years
to many court victories to stop the plan to put retirees in Medicare
Advantage and also to fight co-pays, takes on NAC co-chair Nick Bacon (who replaced Halabi, and spends most of his writing time attacking Marianne, ABC and FRB while making excuses for Unity.)
If Retiree Healthcare is the main issue, why I am the focus of Nick Bacon?
Nick
Bacon’s piece deserves a response, not because NYC Organization of
Public Service Retirees needs to defend its independence, but because
his argument appears to conflate two entirely different questions:
Should the UFT formally affiliate with NYCOPSR?
and
Should
UFT members or opposition caucuses be free to work with an independent
retiree organization on issues where they share common goals?
Those are not the same question.
Nick spends considerable time explaining why the UFT shouldn’t
formally partner with NYCOPSR. But who is actually proposing that? If
the current question is whether different UFT opposition groups should
work together, why is NYCOPSR being presented as the obstacle? If Daniel
Alicea, Arthur Goldstein, or others want to work with NYCOPSR on
retiree healthcare, that does not mean NYCOPSR controls their slate. It
doesn’t mean they surrender their
independence. It doesn’t mean they agree with us on every issue. We do
not. It means they recognize that on one important issue, protecting
retiree healthcare, they share common ground. That is called coalition
politics. We align on what we agree with, and not where we don’t.
And
if someone believes that working with NYCOPSR should disqualify an
opposition group from participating in a broader UFT coalition, then
they should simply say that directly. Don’t disguise a political
decision as a legal necessity
No one from the UFT/Unity was there (of course) but we had 4 members of the RTC Exec Bd at the event and a nice crew from Fix Retiree Benefits, which has been working closely with NYC Retirees.
Fix Retiree Benefits in the house
Saturday, August 15, 2026
DSA had a bunch of social events going on today and I intend to go to a beach party in Rockaway where I will stand around and try to find someone over 30 to talk to. There is also a local Rockaway DSA group meeting elsewhere which actually includes older people. Oh, the choices.
I attended the Thursday morning NYC Retiree rally and presser near City Hall along a nice sized crowd where the new bill replacing 1096 was announced by Democrat Chris Marti, one of the most liberal city council members from the lower East Side who was joined by Staten Island Republican Frank Morano, one of the most conservative members.
Only Marianne Pizzitola could accomplish such a feat of unity. I find it more than ironic that certain forces inside the current leadership of the Retired Teachers Chapter of the UFT have been critical of her efforts to unite all sides of the political world in the the support of the healthcare of retired NYC workers because they would rather people whose politics they abhor not to support us and castigate Marianne for getting them to work in our interests. The level of support for working with Marianne is one sticking point in the disagreement between the 30 year old Retiree Advocate, which won the 2024 election with Marianne's massive support, and the new kids on the block, Fix Retiree Benefits (FRB), which has been working with her organization to battle on issues like co-pay and para pensions.
After it was over and we took photos, I was one of the few people left when Rockaway lifeguard legend Janet Fash showed up.
She came by subway, so no surprise that the A-train would get here there late. She was disappointed in not getting to meet Marianne and Arthur Goldstein. I had just bought her book the day before and she signed it. (CBS Saturday morning just did a major feature on her and she has been appearing on NPR and other media). Her book goes beyond her life story and explores the corrupt lifeguard union. I remember reading about her battles with the union leader, who was also her boss. (Yes she was retaliated against). She was also active in the UFT as a chapter leader in a Queens middle school and had gone to UFT DAs and borough meetings and was aware the UFT is not democratic.
She is very up to date on the doings in the retiree chapter. I ran into her at the June RTC meeting and she attended the FRB zoom in late June and signed up to be more involved. She decided to take the ferry back to Rockaway and I considered going with her. I was trying to decide whether to go back to Rockaway or go back uptown to Bryant Park for a 12:30 Broadway in the park. I also had tickets for an Art Cart drawing class at 2:30. Having had chemo the day before, I had to make sure I had the energy to keep going. I decided to stay in the city and take a late afternoon ferry home.
I stopped for breakfast at a Dunkn on Chambers St. and took the subway uptown to Bryant Park (one of the great wonders of NYC and only a few blocks from my pied... er apartment (don't tell Mamdani - lucky I have a cheaper one). The night before I missed the 6PM yoga class but this Monday I'm going to the City of God movie.
Anyway, I'm so glad a went because I met two ladies with health issues, one with Type 1 diabetes (she was wearing a dexcom patch) and later at the Art Cart a cancer survivor who had a lot of knowledge and was very encouraging. We talked so much, my drawing of the buildings surrounding the park look like a Jackson Pollock.
Back to the rally and presser, this is an updated version of Intro 1096 that was proposed during the 2024-25 Council session.
The bill summary states: This
bill would maintain the health insurance coverage of eligible retired
employees of the city of New York and their dependents by prohibiting
the City from increasing the total costs for healthcare above the rate
paid by each retiree as of December 31, 2021, or by decreasing the level
of coverage that was provided to each such retiree as of December 31,
2021.
The full text of the bill reads as follows:
Int. No. 1008
A
Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in
relation to protecting the health insurance coverage and contribution
for Medicare-eligible retired employees of the city of New York and
their Medicare-eligible dependents
Be it enacted by the Council as follows:
Section
1. Subdivision a of section 12-126 of the administrative code of the
city of New York, as amended by local law number 9 for the year 2010, is
amended to read as follows:
a. Definitions. As used in this section, the following terms shall have the following meanings [hereinafter stated]:
[i.
“]City employee.[“] The term “city employee” means [A] a person: (1)
who is employed by a department or agency of the city; and (2) is paid
out of the city treasury; and (3) is employed under terms prescribing a
work week regularly consisting of twenty or more hours during the fiscal
year; and (4) is not employed by the board of education.
[ii.
“]City retiree.[“] The term “city retiree” means [A] a person who: (1)
is receiving a retirement allowance, pension or other retirement
benefit from a retirement or pension system either maintained by the
city or to which the city has made contributions on behalf of such
person pursuant to subdivision (g) of section 80-a of the retirement and
social security law; and (2) immediately prior to such person's
retirement as a member of such system, was a city employee, or was an
employee of the board of education employed under terms prescribing a
work week regularly consisting of twenty or more hours during the fiscal
year; and (3) had at the time of retirement, at least five years of
credited service as a member of such retirement or pension system,
except that (A) such requirement of credited service shall not apply in
cases of retirement for accident disability, (B) the requirement of
credited service for vested retirement and service retirement shall be
at least ten years for a person who was not an employee of the city or
the board of education on or before the effective date of the local law
that added this clause, and (C) notwithstanding the provisions of clause
(B) of this subparagraph, the requirement of credited service for
vested retirement and service retirement shall be at least fifteen years
for a person who was not an employee of the city or the board of
education on or before the effective date of the local law that added
this clause, is receiving a retirement allowance from the New York city
teachers' retirement system or the New York city board of education
retirement system, and held a position represented by the recognized
teacher organization for collective bargaining purposes on such person's
last day of paid service.
[iii.
“]Dependent.[“] The term “dependent” means [T]the spouse of a city
employee or city retiree or any child of a city employee or city retiree
during the period of eligibility of such child for coverage under the
insurance contract applicable to such employee or retiree; provided,
however, that no spouse or child of any such employee or retiree shall
be deemed a dependent after the death of such employee or retiree.
Diminish.
The term “diminish” means to cause any change in health care offered
that could potentially make it harder for city retirees residing
anywhere in the United States, including its territories and
possessions, to access their health care than before such change was
made. These changes include increasing the total costs for healthcare
paid by each city retiree, including with respect to premiums,
deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments.
[iv.
“]Health insurance coverage.[“] The term “health insurance coverage”
means [A] a program of hospital-surgical-medical benefits to be provided
by health and hospitalization insurance contracts entered into between
the city and companies providing such health and hospitalization
insurance.
§
2. Section 12-126 of the administrative code of the city of New York is
amended by adding a new subdivision e to read as follows:
e.
The city shall not diminish the health insurance coverage provided to
city retirees and their dependents or the contributions the city makes
for such health insurance coverage below the level of such benefits or
contributions made on behalf of such city retirees and their dependents
by the city as of December 31, 2021. Nothing in this subdivision shall
be construed to impair the ability of employee organizations to
negotiate the terms and conditions of employment, including those
concerning future retirement benefits, for their employee members.
§
3. This local law takes effect immediately and is retroactive to and
deemed to have been in full force and effect on and after December 31,
2021.
New York City Council Member Chris Marte [D-1st District] reintroduced legislation on Thursday aimed at blocking ongoing efforts to chip away at the healthcare coverage municipal retirees earned after decades on the job—and this time, he said, the bill will pass.
“I think there’s a lot of momentum on our side,” Marte told Work-Bites outside the gates of City Hall Aug. 13. “Whether it’s the recent [court] decisions, the [$53M] settlement, it really shows that this is a force to be reckoned with and we’re on the right side of history.”
In 2024, then Mayoral-candidate Zohran Mamdani told Work-Bites that Marte’s bill—then known as Intro. 1096— would not be needed if he was elected. But municipal retirees who have continued to press for legislation further codifying the healthcare package they had enjoyed up until the end of 2021, insist a new bill is needed.
Last year, they successfully pushed Mayor Eric Adams to abandon a campaign—originally hatched between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the heads of the largest public sector unions in the city—to strip municipal retirees their tradition Medicare and Medigap benefits and herd them into a profit-driven Medicare Advantage plan.
The scheme was supposedly going to save the City of New York $600 million annually and cover long overdue raises for active city workers.
Adams also imposed $15 copays on municipal retirees that many living on severely limited incomes could hardly afford. Retirees fought them, too, ultimately convincing Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank to block the charges in 2023.
Venerable New York City municipal retiree Evelyn Jones-Rich helps to rally supporters outside the gates of City Hall this week.
The Adams administration later responded and successfully managed to reinstate the copays.
Just this month, however, municipal retirees won a $53 million settlement with the City of New York and EmblemHelath reimbursing them for the $15 copays they were forced to part with back in 2022.
This week, Marte said his reintroduced bill will put a stop to any further efforts to diminish retiree healthcare.
“Whether that’s limiting your network, whether that’s changing your provider to give you a worse system or increase your copays—that will not happen when we pass this bill,” he said on Thursday.
Previous versions of the retiree bill, according to Marte, had to “side step” the legislative process and be introduced from the City Council floor because then-City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams opposed it.
This time, he added, his team has been able to introduce the bill though the legislative process with the bill-drafting unit, “so [opponents] can no longer say that we did not look at this bill before it was introduced.”
Council Member Frank Morano [r] joins fellow Council Member Chris Marte [l] in calling for passage of newly-reintroduce legislation protecting the traditional Medicare benefits City retirees earned on the job.
“They can no longer say that our lawyers didn’t have an opportunity to look at every single word to make sure it was right or not. All those false narratives they’ve used in the past two years against us—they can no longer be used today,” he said.
Intro. 1096 largely failed to pass because District 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, head of the largest public sector union in the city, also opposed it and actively worked to intimidate other City Council members against supporting it.
“We are in the fight of our lives,” nonagenarian Evelyn Jones-Rich told Work-Bites on Thursday. “There are millions of us who believe in ourselves and the city we built—and we will prevail. We will fight to keep our traditional Medicare, we’re going to fight to keep our supplements, we’re going to fight to not have copays. We believe that we make this city and this nation—little people like us, ordinary people, ladies who have struggled behind the scenes. We have stood in the shadows for too long. Now we are standing up—we are speaking out.”
Marte’s reintroduced retiree bill also comes out of the gate with strong bipartisan support. In co-sponsoring the new legislation, City Council Member Frank Morano [R-51st District] has easily out-lefted the most progressive members in the legislative body and democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani himself.
“The government talks constantly about rebuilding trust,” Morano said on Thursday. “Here’s a good place to start: Keep your word. The $53M victory that we’re [also] talking about today proves something else: You can fight City Hall—and sometimes City Hall loses. Retirees should’t have to hire lawyers and spend years in court every time somebody in government comes up with another clever way to reinterpret a promise. That’s why we need legislation.”
Mariann Pizzitola, retired FDNY EMS first-responder and head of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, said the City of New York should never seek to achieve savings or balance the budget on the backs of active workers or retirees.
“Here’s the deal,” she said, “these people worked for decades. They’ve been retired for decades. A promise was made to them. They kept their end of the deal and the city has to keep its promise. We’re going to hold them accountable to that.”
Mayor Mamdani, a close ally of Garrido, has so far ignored Pizzitola’s requests to meet and discuss retiree legislation.
Garrido, along with the other of the heads of the Municipal Labor Committee—UFT President Michael Mulgrew and Uniformed Sanitation Men’s Association President Harry Nespoli [retired]—have long insisted that legislation protecting retiree healthcare violates collective bargaining rights.
Marte, however, maintains that the newly-reintroduced retiree bill explicitly protects collective bargaining and that nothing in it limits the ability of employee organizations to “negotiate terms and conditions of employment, including future retirement benefits, on behalf of the active employees they represent.”
“We have heard the stories of retirees being frustrated, being scared, having anxiety every time they wake up, or every time they have to go to their doctor or provider—that is killing our people who have given so much for our city,” Marte said on Thursday.
Despite TRIPLING the retiree vote received by RA in the 2025 election, the union activists involved in Fix Retiree Benefits have offered to split the RTC slate evenly (50/50) and to work together with RA to develop a platform. That offer from Fix Retiree Benefits was presented in good faith and in the spirit of union solidarity, and it still stands. RA should take the offer, and we should all get to work in defeating Unity, whose nearly 70-year obsessive control of the UFT has resulted in 20+ years of diminishing returns for all UFT members.