By Paul Becker

With health care for retirees the big issue, a major step forward in the fight for democratic unionism was registered last week when a rank-and-file slate swept the elections for officers and delegates of the retirees chapter of the United Federation of Teachers. The chapter vote has implications of trouble for the leadership of the UFT, which through its Unity caucus has been running the union since its founding nearly 65 years ago. The current UFT president, Michael Mulgrew, has held office for the past 15 years. He and the officers of the entire union are up for election next year.

NYC municipal retirees march down Broadway protesting the city’s ongoing campaign to push them into a for-profit, privatized Medicare Advantage plan. Photo by Joe Maniscalco, Workbites

The Retiree Advocate slate, ran up an impressive victory, scoring nearly two-thirds of the more than 27,000 votes and ousting the Unity caucus leadership of the retirees chapter. The UFT is New York’s Local 2 of the American Federation of Teachers.

Resentment against the UFT leadership has been building slowly during the past few years over the union’s acceptance of substandard contracts for teachers, paraprofessionals, and other New York City school employees. A growing number of union members also resent Unity caucus’ cling to power through a well-oiled political machine, abandoning principles of democratic unionism and playing ball with local and state politicians rather than fighting for its members. Unlike many unions, retired members can vote in union-wide elections and, until recently, have provided an important base of support for Unity caucus.

The key issue in this campaign was the attempt by UFT leaders, acting with the heads of other large municipal unions to force their members out of traditional Medicare and into a so-called Medicare Advantage plan. (The insurer for city workers would be the health insurance mega corporation, Aetna.) The move would affect hundreds of thousands of retired city workers. Over the years, these workers, including teachers, made concessions on other benefits over the promise that, upon retirement, they would have fully paid health care with the gap between Medicare payments and costs of medical treatments covered by the city. As such, teachers are covered by Medicare with GHI as the secondary insurer. The premiums for this secondary insurance were reimbursed. Under the new proposal, if teachers elected to stay with traditional Medicare, this reimbursement would be dropped, costing them a substantial amount of money that retirees with their limited income could ill afford.

The so-called Medicare Advantage plans, despite being sold under the label “advantage” and putting forth some enticements like free gym memberships, have some very important disadvantages. It is run by private corporations whose principal goal is bottom-line profits rather than making patients healthy. While some 85 to 90 percent of American doctors accept Medicare payments, under corporate Medicare Advantage, you have to choose from their panel of doctors. Thus, many teachers would have to abandon the doctors they have had over the years whom they have trusted and who know them to switch to a doctor they do not know.

Cartoon by Fred Wright. Courtesy United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers (UE)

Even more important, Medicare Advantage plans require pre-approval for many medical procedures. If pre-approval is denied, they won’t pay for it. The patient can appeal but it can still be denied, or even if it’s approved, it often takes time when a speedy treatment is necessary. During the campaign of teachers and other city workers against the planned switch, a number of people have come forward to tell of their experiences when the delay has resulted in severe damage including death to a family member or friend. Medicare, on the other hand, usually accepts the judgment of the doctors, except in cases of outright fraud. My own doctor, an outstanding physician who is recognized as one of New York City’s best cardiologists, complained to me that he now has to spend nearly half his time on the phone arguing with private insurance companies about the necessity of a medical treatment for patients who have been denied coverage.

These private insurance plans have been reaping fat rewards since Congress, about 30 years ago, allowed them to collect subsidies from Medicare that should have gone to health care for people on the government program. And recently, some of them have been caught defrauding Medicare by billing for services that were never delivered. Little wonder that giant insurance companies now crowd the field as they discover “there’s gold in them thar hills.”

Several months ago, a state court ruled that the city could not change the health care plan promised to retirees. The ruling was upheld by the New York State Appellate Court but New York Mayor Eric Adams has said he would appeal to the state Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state.

The win for the Retiree Advocate slate pledged to fight against forcing retired school employers into these private plans could have important implications not only for next year’s elections for union-wide UFT officers but for other unions of city workers which have endorsed the plan despite the growing objections of their retirees.

Some big wins for labor over the past couple of months have signaled the rising power of the union movement. It may well be the opening shot across the bow against corporate attacks on unions over the last four decades that has resulted in a steady decline in the standard of living of working people.

UAW President Shawn Fain, shown with striking workers, has pledged an agressive organizing campaign at non-union auto facilities., Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press

The biggest wins for workers were in the highly successful strike by the United Auto Workers against the Big Three car manufacturers – GM, Ford, and Stellantis.  Instead of the usual strike against the entire company at once, it adopted the rolling strike tactic, hitting a limited number of auto factories at each carmaker at a time. The companies never knew which would be next and the strikes at plants that played a vital part in car production affected production as a whole in other places.

And by framing the strike, not only as one conducted by a union against management, but as a fight for working people against the greed that has resulted in huge growth in corporate profits at the expense of declining standards for America’s working people, UAW President Sean Fain ignited the fighting working class spirit that built the union movement in decades past.

When the Big Three finally caved after about six weeks, the resulting contract the union won was the best in the union’s history, unmatched since the contracts won in 1937 after the Flint, Michigan, sitdown strike that built the union. The principal terms of the contract have been reported widely. Outstanding among them are a  25 percent wage increase over the four-and-a-half year contract and an end to the two-tier wage system that saw younger workers never able to earn what workers hired earlier could earn. An end to their second class status and their elevation to the pay scale enjoyed by older workers will give them extraordinary pay raises, in some cases up to 150 percent. The union also won a restoration of the cost-of-living (COLA) adjustment that had been a feature of UAW contracts from 1948 to 2008 when the union gave in to industry’s demand to end it.

And in an important union first, the contract guarantees that workers at battery production plants for its new electric cars will be included in the new master agreement, setting the stage for the union’ s announced goal of organizing non-union electric car manufacturers.

As of this writing, the contract was in the process of being voted on by the UAW membership.

Two other big wins this summer and fall were the contract won by Teamsters Union drivers at UPS without a strike but just the threat of one. In a contract agreed to just 24 hours before a strike was scheduled, 340,000 Teamster members at UPS won raises of $7.50 an hour over five years, with drivers’ pay climbing to $49 an hour and part-time workers receiving a pay increase of 48% on average. The agreement also ends a two-tiered classification for drivers, provides part-timers with longevity raises, adds Martin Luther King Day as a paid holiday off, and ends forced overtime on off days.

And the months long strike by the two unions representing TV and motion picture screen writers and actors has produced contracts with substantial gains. The Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,500 screenwriters, reached a tentative agreement with studios on Sept. 24 and ended its 148-day strike on Sept. 27. In the coming days, SAG-AFTRA members will vote on whether to accept their union’s deal, which includes hefty gains, like increases in compensation for streaming shows and films, better health care funding, concessions from studios on self-taped auditions, and guarantees that studios will not use artificial intelligence to create digital replicas of their likenesses without payment or approval.

And in just a few other recent labor actions:

In August, 15,000 American Airlines pilots won pay increases of 46% over four years. After a three-day strike earlier this month, 85,000 Kaiser Permanente workers won raises of 21%, as well as a $25 minimum wage for Kaiser’s workers in California. In March, 30,000 Los Angeles school district workers – bus drivers, cafeteria workers and teachers’ aides – won a 30% wage hike over four years. In Oregon, 1,400 nurses at Providence Portland hospitalsecured raises between 17% and 27% over two years.

And all indications are that it’s just the beginning.

NY Times, 10/31, 11/8; The Guardian, 10/24; Jacobin, 11/1

By now, much has been written about the narrowly averted railroad workers strike. Although salary issues are nearly always paramount in collective bargaining and was an issue here, the key sticking point was the punishing work schedules that was wreaking havoc on workers lives. Workers were expected to be on call at any time for weeks on end. They couldn’t take time off for a doctor’s appointment or a family emergency without being penalized with loss of pay beyond the loss of the day’s pay or possibly even fired.

The policy comes from a business model increasingly being adopted by other companies. It seeks to enhance its profits by cutting costs, which usually involves cutting the work force, thus cutting labor costs. It means that the existing labor force is pressured to do more and more to make up for it. Rail companies are now reported to be operating with 30 percent fewer employees than 20 or 30 years ago.

Thus, as the freight railroads have racked up record profits in recent years, their workers have suffered from burnouts, marriages and family lives have been upended, and workers’ health has been severely endangered by the scheduling policies.

Although all the details of the rail settlement have not been revealed in the press, it appears that the unions have gained important concessions on this. From initial reports, aside from important salary hikes, the companies have agreed to issue set schedules that allow workers to enjoy time off without being called back at the will of the company. They will also have days off for medical appointments or family emergencies without additional penalties.

The agreement now has to be ratified by votes of the membership of the 12 unions involved.

NY Times, 9/16