Retirees are not in unions. We do not collectively bargain; we made our deals. We kept our promises, and the City must keep its promise. Unfortunately, the Mayor's Office of Labor Relations encouraged the two largest unions in the city to leverage OUR EARNED healthcare to pay for their contracts, which we do not benefit from.

The City Council passed a law known as 12-126 in 1967 at the request of Mayor Lindsay to give us healthcare and pay for it. In 60 years, the City never charged us as promised or diminished our healthcare. It was the UFT and DC37, as leadership of the MLC, who did, to pay for their active worker raises.

We need the City Council to pass this amendment to the law to protect what we earned. We seek no more than we were promised. We demand to get no less. And this law does not violate collective bargaining, because we are not in the union since we retired decades ago!