UFT Unity Works for Mayor Eric Adams

NYC Mayor Eric Adams has a great ally in the UFT Unity Caucus. For one thing, they both share the same slogan. They "get stuff done." They've screwed us once again on health care (and I'll get  back to that shortly).

UFT Unity was crowing about how they got yesterday, a day of frigging meetings, to be remote. Fine, but it would've been a lot smarter to do that Wednesday, when it was a surreal hellscape outdoors. 

I don't know whether they're taking credit for making today remote, but I will say that remote teaching is just abysmal. It doesn't compare to what we can do face to face. I hate it, and it's the very first thing that made me consider retirement.

Back to the main topic--yesterday Controller Brad Lander declined to register the AETNA contract. That felt like a good thing. I thought it would delay the crappy Advantage plan that UFT Unity and Mayor Swagger were foisting upon us. Alas, today I have it on good authority that the mayor will simply sign it anyway. Probably we'll all get an email signed by Mulgrew on the Great Victory he achieved. Now, Eric Adams can save 600 million dollars a year forever, and all it cost us, so far, was Medicare. Retirees on limited means must have been sick to death of having no copays, and will just love handing them over to increase profit for Aetna.

It's very, very hard for me to imagine this is a good deal. First of all, we are promoting privatization. This enables the parasitical Aetna to take money that ought to be devoted to our health care. How exactly that saves money eludes me utterly. It further means that Aetna will get a veto over what procedures we need. The fact is they have an eye on their bottom line, not our health. While there is an agreement for fewer pre-approvals for a few years, that will sunset. Then UFT Unity will likely find another great opportunity to save Eric Adams even more money. 

It's beyond remarkable that UFT Unity is working in the interests of Eric Adams, our contractual adversary. They failed to organize the MLC to enact a minimum raise. They enabled a raise that's one third of inflation. Then, they organized demonstrations in which they exhorted us to get out there and  demand sub-inflation raises. We all know they're coming after in-service health care next. Mulgrew gets up at the DA and says we need a plan that's 10% cheaper. Sorry, but working teachers need a plan that better, not cheaper.

Privatization hurts education. That's why UFT Unity, finally, after years of enabling charter schools, and even starting their own, has come around to oppose corporate charters. In their zeal to save money for Eric Adams, they seem to have lost sight of the fact that privatization of health care is not only essentially similar to privatization of education, but also a cancer--one that literally kills Americans who haven't got sufficient access to health care. I've known two such Americans personally.

It's not good enough for us to say, "We have ours, and screw everyone else." That's precisely the message Micheal Mulgrew delivers when he opposes the NY Health Act. He says we negotiated this, we negotiated that, and we're not giving it up. Personally, when I look at NYHA, I can't see how we'd lose anything except the catastrophic medical emergencies that lead so many of us to bankruptcy. 

Sponsors of NYHA have reached out to unions and offered to address whatever objections they may have. I haven't heard a peep about the UFT responding. Why not? I suspect they're interested in preserving all those sweet patronage gigs at the Welfare Fund. After all, we could've saved Eric Adams a ton of cash by consolidating all the city welfare funds. MLC, including UFT Unity, decided not to do so. They'd rather throw the members to the dogs than give up those patronage gigs that so neatly tie members to their caucus. 

Privatized health care, just like Aetna, has its roots in institutionalized racism. Aetna used to insure slaveowners in case they lost their "property." And health insurance in the USA has gone disproportionately to the people who got the good jobs, not the ones who got doors slammed in their faces. It's a discriminatory practice that hurts Americans. We, labor unions, are enabling and promoting it rather than addressing it. 

And even if you choose to reject the argument that shutting people out of health insurance is discriminatory, you can't refute the fact that our union leaders, including UFT Unity, are working day and night to make our health care worse. That is not what union is for. Union is supposed to raise standards for everyone.

UFT Unity is a disgrace, and needs to be voted out. Retirees will soon send them that message, and rank and file, once screwed with inferior health care, will follow. Leadership is supposed to represent us, not Eric Adams. To survive as a union, we need leadership that understands this. 

It's not good enough to "get stuff done." The "stuff" needs to benefit us (and ideally others as well).