The UFT is continuing its decades-long battle to preserve premium-free health insurance for its members, both in-service and retired. The union is asking the New York City Council to amend the city’s administrative code to:

• state explicitly that the city must negotiate with the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC), to which the UFT belongs, on all employee health care plans.
• allow that city unions may negotiate for employees to have health care plan choices.

The union needed to go this route because certain elements of the judge’s March 2022 ruling in the NYC Medicare Advantage Plus litigation cannot stand. The judge’s ruling takes away part of the MLC’s collective bargaining authority as unions – and goes against decades of past practice – and it provides an opening for the city to declare it will only offer one health care plan for retirees.

If you missed the UFT’s Sept. 20 town hall for RTC members, you can hear the recording.