A few of our stories and columns are now in front of the paywall. We at The Chief remain committed to independent reporting on labor and civil service. It's been our mission since 1897. You can have a hand in ensuring that our reporting remains relevant in the decades to come. Consider supporting The Chief, which you can do for as little as $3.20 a month.
To the editor:
I have never voted for anyone to represent me as a NYC municipal retiree. My former union has a retiree division that provides benefits paid for from its welfare fund.
I don’t pay dues and don’t vote for their officers. An agreement with NYC determines how much money is contributed to the unions’ benefit funds for retirees.
The Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) negotiates for the health benefits applicable to all 102 member unions. It is structured so that each member’s voting power is determined by the number of workers and retirees.
While there are uniform citywide contracts for hospital and medical insurance, the separate unions offer differing benefits, e.g. some provide drug benefits, others don’t. There is no uniformity of coverage.
The MLC unions include the 250,000 retirees among the 400,000 total members for the purposes of voting. Weighted voting based on total members means the United Federation of Teachers and District Council 37 alone can win any vote.
Retirees earned their health benefits that were negotiated while they were still employed. The MLC, who claims it represents my interests, advocated for a retiree giveback, i.e. co-pays, when we could not gain any benefits in return.
If the MLC wants to negotiate for my previously earned health care benefit, then I should be able to elect a voting retiree representative to the MLC. The retiree representative would control the MLC voting outnumbering the 150,000 active city workers.
NYC would likely gain financially if they stopped including retirees in the count that determines the amount of money contributed to the unions’ benefit funds and instead pooled that money to provide retiree FSA accounts; retirees could purchase insurance on the open market.
If NYC doesn’t want to administer those funds, then let’s establish and elect a retiree organization to manage a retiree benefit fund.
William Shenton,
The author is a former member of Teamsters Local 237 and a New York City Housing Authority worker who retired at the end of 2000.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here