A few weeks go, Evelyn Jones Rich wrote an excellent editorial on the struggle between the City and its retirees, in which the City, with the complicity of the Municipal Labor Committee, is attempting to cut retirees’ health care by throwing us into an inferior so-called “Advantage” plan. Their only advantage is to the insurance companies. Aetna, the proposed supplier of the City’s new plan, made $11.9 billion in profits last year and its CEO made a salary of $27.9 million. That money comes from our taxes, from fraudulent billing and from denial of services to those who are enrolled.
The struggle to stop the City from betraying its retirees, and its current and future workers, is ongoing, and on January 9, 2023, the City Council Committee on Civil Service and Labor Committee, chaired by District 10’s Carmen De La Rosa, held hearings on whether to amend City Code Section 12-126. The amendment would remove the City’s obligation to provide cost-free health insurance for its workers, past, present and future, even though security in retirement is one of the major reasons we worked and work for the City, receiving salaries that are far smaller than what other employers pay. The amendment would not keep choice for retirees. It would leave the way open for the City to create a tiered health system—better for some, not good for those at the bottom. It would allow the City to push in-service workers into HMOs, denying them, too, of necessary services. It would be another nail in the coffin of solidarity.The final Council vote on the matter is scheduled for January 19. Between now and the date of the vote, readers of the Amsterdam News and their friends and families must contact their council members and tell them that there can be no amendment to Section 12-126, that we have paid for our health insurance with our salaries and our service, and that they must not rob us of the taxes we have paid to provide for ourselves in our retirement. You must assure your council members that there will be consequences if they vote against our interests.
Don’t mess with our medical benefits