By GREGORY N. HEIRES and RAYMOND MARKEY
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees held a hearing on March 14 to review its decision to put the Retirees Association of DC 37 under a trusteeship.
At the 4-hour virtual hearing, retirees disputed the national union’s justification of the takeover in which AFSCME cited the association’s failure to file certain tax forms.
Retirees charged that the administratorship was carried out in opposition to the association’s financial backing of lawsuits challenging the city’s plan to replace their traditional Medicare coverage with a Medicare Advantage plan. The switch, which would affect some 250,000 retired city workers, is supported by District Council 37, the national union’s flagship affiliate.
When AFSCME took over the association’s Manhattan office in February, it assumed control of organization’s records and suspended its elected leaders. The national union said it was taking that action because the retirees group failed to file 990 IRS forms.
Neal Frumpkin, the association’s vice president for interunion relations, noted that the trusteeship came shortly after the association resumed its support for the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees’ three lawsuits against the city scheme to shift municipal retirees into the Aetna Medicare Advantage Plan.
At AFSCME’s insistence, the association had earlier stopped its funding, but it decided to resume contributing after lengthy deliberations by an association committee.
Frumpkin pointed out at the hearing that while several other DC 37 locals also failed to file the forms, AFSCME had not put them under trusteeship.
In the weeks leading up to trusteeship, the national union and the association were engaged in heated discussions over the retirees group’s opposition to the plan. Then, only a few weeks after learning about the tax forms, AFSCME carried out the takeover, Frumpkin noted.
The presidents of Local 371 and Local 372, supporters of DC 37 Executive Director Henry Garrido, and the administrator of Local 1549 threatened to stop covering the first year of dues of retired members, the usual practice at the council, in an apparent attempt to force the association to stop its support of the lawsuits.
At the hearing, AFSCME Retirees Director Ann Widger, who is now the administrator of the Retirees Association, acknowledged that she didn’t have the time to keep track of the financial affairs of the association before the takeover. A retiree expressed her indignation that Widger said she lacked the time to monitor the association while now having no problem assuming the day-to-day administration of the operations of an organization serving some 25,000 retirees.
Widger also said that–without acknowledging her presence–she monitored association executive board and other meetings. Carla Insinga, chair of the AFSCME Judicial Panel, ran the hearing.
In addition to Frumpkin, dozens of retirees signed up for the hearing. The ones who testified included former presidents Ed Hysyk and Bob Gervasi; retired New York Public Library Guild Local 1930 President Raymond Markey, who is also a member of Labor for Traditional Medicare, which is fighting the Medicare Advantage plan scheme; and retired Emergency Medical Services worker Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees, which filed the three lawsuits against Mayor Eric Adam’s plan to shift retirees into Medicare Advantage.
Meanwhile, many retirees say pursuing carrying out the trusteeship is not a good long-term policy for AFSCME. What the national union is doing, they say, is stomping on elderly people.
TheNewCrossroads blogger Gregory N. Heires is a former president of the Metro NY Labor Communications Council, former sr. associate director in the Communications Dept. of DC 37 and a member of the coordinating committee of Labor for Traditional Medicare. Raymond is a retired president of New York Public Library Guild Local 1930 and former executive board member of DC 37. He also serves on the coordinating committee of Labor for Traditional Medicare.
