Last week, New Yorkers witnessed a City Council hearing on the future of the Central Park horse carriage industry.
TWU Local 100 President John Chiarello passionately defended the carriage drivers and horses. His testimony was heartfelt. The veterinarian who followed painted a picture of exceptional medical care. The horses, the Council was told, have stable attendants watching over them around the clock, and immediate access to a veterinarian 24 hours a day.
No reasonable person would argue against providing animals with excellent medical care. Every animal deserves humane treatment and prompt access to care.
Listening to the testimony, we couldn’t escape one troubling thought. Where is that same passion when it comes to TWU’s retirees?
For two years, thousands of retired transit workers have struggled after being forced into an Aetna Medicare Advantage plan when their former union replaced the traditional Medicare coverage they spent decades believing they had earned. That’s because TWU Local 100’s previous leadership made the change to fund a 2% wage increase for active workers.
As a result, many retirees have reported delays and denials of care, burdensome prior authorization requirements, restrictions on providers, and constant anxiety that accompanies navigating a private insurance plan during the vulnerable years of their lives.
NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees highlighted two of these cases. On our social media, we told the story of Rosalyn, a train conductor who was denied an implanted cardiac defibrillator two years ago, now with a severe heart valve defect and needing a replacement. Aetna denied that twice.
We also highlighted the story of Charlie, a retired bus operator with lymphoma currently in Memorial Sloan Kettering because Aetna denied discharge to two rehabilitation facilities near the hospital. Aetna selected one in another borough that was not acceptable to Charlie. Both would have received care their doctors ordered if they were on traditional Medicare.
These aren’t strangers to TWU Local 100.
These are the men and women who spent decades operating buses, maintaining subways, repairing tracks, and kept New York moving through snowstorms, terrorist attacks, and a global pandemic. They were also dues paying members of TWU.
Many retirees felt that when they voiced concerns about diminished healthcare, union leadership dismissed them rather than defended them.
That is the irony that made last week’s hearing so difficult to watch.
Retired transit workers wish someone advocated that forcefully when their own medical care was denied? Rosalyn and Charlie asked the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees for help because calls to TWU were ignored. We asked TWU for assistance and were ignored as well.
A union’s responsibility does not end the day a member retires. Retirement is not the expiration date of solidarity. The promises made to workers over a lifetime of service should not disappear simply because they no longer collect a paycheck.
The question is why TWU leadership appears willing to fight so publicly and passionately for one group while remaining largely silent about another: its own retirees.
If a union can mobilize to ensure that carriage horses have continuous medical oversight, surely it can summon that same determination to protect healthcare of its retired members who built the union.
That hearing unintentionally exposed a painful contradiction.
The horses have advocates. TWU retirees are still waiting for theirs, but since Local 100 is in contract negotiations, they can fix a wrong made by previous leadership if they wanted to, bring back the retirees’ traditional Medicare Supplement.
Pizzitola is president of the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees. Archer is president of TWU100R Retirees.