Portside

Later this month, the umbrella organization of city public-sector unions will vote on a proposed cost-saving municipal health plan negotiated by city and union officials with two major insurance firms. 

The proposal, jointly administered by EmblemHealth and UnitedHealthcare, would continue to provide premium-free coverage for 750,000 active and retired city employees and their families, according to City Hall. It would also for the first time move the city to a self-funded insurance model, typical for large employers, and save the city an estimated $1 billion a year as it contends with ever-escalating health benefits costs.

The Municipal Labor Committee, though, has not had a chairperson since Harry Nespoli’s retirement in May. The longtime president of the Teamsters Local 831, the Uniformed Sanitationmen's Association, had headed the committee since 2008, when he succeeded Randi Weingarten in the post. 

A few have vyed to succeed Nespoli, according to one union leader, but otf the two leading candidates, neither District Council 37’s executive director, Henry Garrido, nor Teamsters Local 237’s president, Gregory Floyd, received the required two-thirds vote in weighted balloting, by which each MLC member union is allotted a vote for every 250 members. 

But the lack of a de facto leader at the MLC, which counts some 100 municipal unions, should not hinder the committee’s role regarding the health plan, said both Nespoli and Robert Croghan, the long-serving chairperson of the Organization of Staff Analysts. 

“I think that that will be on the agenda fairly soon. I can't imagine otherwise, really. Secondly, it obviously has not stopped people from continuing on,” said Croghan, the dean of the municipal labor leaders, alluding to the MLC’s negotiators on the health plan.

Nespoli, also in a phone interview Monday, said the MLC’s bylaws might need changing if neither Floyd, the MLC secretary, nor Garrido, the organization's co-chair, can secure the requisite two-thirds vote. Any change to the bylaws would also require a two-thirds vote. 

Regardless, Nespoli said Garrido and Floyd were both worthy successors. “Both guys are qualified to hold that position,” he said. “They’ve been around a long time and they both have large memberships.”

Representatives from the MLC’s member unions had an opportunity Monday to view some of the health plan’s documents. Representatives from The Segal Group, a downtown consulting firm working for the MLC, will conduct a briefing on the plan Wednesday, also at DC 37 headquarters. 

Croghan said he does not yet know whether he or a union rep will have an opportunity to review the entire agreement, but that among the details union leaders will be looking to ferret out will be the accessibility to doctors and clinicians, the cost of copays and drugs, and which procedures would need prior authorization from the insurers. But he suggested that the bar was set fairly high, and called the city’s current plans, “pretty damn good."

“I've never heard complaints about the fact that we don't have good health coverage,” he said. “Are we going to continue having excellent health coverage without having to pay through the nose for it? That is all I'm really looking for. And I think that's what all my members are looking for. They just would like to have as good as they already have.”

District Council 37’s executive director, Henry Garrido, and Mayor Eric Adams at the February 2023 announcement of a tentative contract agreement for nearly 90,000 city workers. Garrido, the Municipal Labor Committee’s co-chair, is vying to succeed Harry Nespoli as MLC chair.

ED REED/MAYORAL PHOTOGRAPHY OFFICE

Denied full access?

But according to past practice, the heads of the MLC’s union members are unlikely to have a chance to review the entire proposal before voting on it, which Marianne Pizzitola, the head of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, called preposterous. 

Pizzitola, arguing that “full transparency” regarding the plan was imperative, said the Public Service Retirees were in the process of drafting a letter to city officials demanding more democratic access to the agreement before it is voted on. She cited court decisions concerning the city’s effort to move municipal retirees to a Medicare Advantage plan, which found that the city did not allow her organization enough time to review a pending agreement with managed-care company Aetna. 

“Remember, I still represent the retirees. The unions don't,” she said of her organization. “And if they refuse, we may just file a restraining order to stop it because they're not giving us the transparency that the judge in the other cases said we were due.”

Pizzitola and others also noted that Floyd, the Local 237 president, as a member of EmblemHealth’s board of directors who also sits on its Compliance Committee, should recuse himself from the vote given the appearance, at the very least, of a conflict of interest. 

A Local 237 representative did not reply to an emailed request to speak with Floyd. 

The United Federation of Teachers’ president, Michael Mulgrew, the MLC’s executive vice chair, who has said unions ensured the tentative healthcare plan would meet the needs of the expected 750,000 active and retired city employees and their dependents. He also said that the lack of a successor to Nespoli has not hampered the process at the MLC.

“I can guarantee you everything is being done in nothing but a collaborative and respectful way between all the MLC leaders. It's not been an issue. We wouldn't be here today talking about this if it was an issue,” he said following the city’s announcement of the plan late last month. “Everyone wants to make sure that there is a candidate we all feel comfortable with and that we can all coalesce around. But in the meantime, we can continue to function as we have quite effectively.”

Nespoli also said the MLC’s business would not be impacted if a chairperson is not chosen before a vote on the health plan, which he said was “spectacular.” Nespoli noted the input of both Garrido and Floyd in its composition, as well as that of Mulgrew and that of Local 1180’s president, Gloria Middleton, who is the MLC’s treasurer. “They had a very big part in that,” he said. 

Garrido, whose union, the city’s largest, represents some 150,000 municipal workers among dozens of locals and hundreds of job titles, is said to have garnered the most votes in that first round and is considered the next likely head of the MLC.