The UFT Welfare Fund is Prioritizing Investments over Dental Benefits

Union members pay high out-of-pocket expenses while the Welfare Fund gets richer

Over the years I’ve been dropped by several dentists. I receive a letter stating that the provider no longer takes the UFT Welfare Fund because it pays them too little. Last year I received such a letter from my current dentist, who I still see but at a cost of $90 instead of the $15 I paid when they took UFT. It seems like I’m not alone—many of my colleagues have also had their dentists stop accepting their insurance. Many also pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars in dental expenses, even when their dentist accepts the Welfare Fund. (If you’re a UFT reader, I’d like to hear your experience with the UFT’s dental care, just reply to this post.) It doesn’t have to be this way. The Welfare Fund is funded by the city but administered by our union—its five Board of Trustees are all UFT officers (and includes President Michael Mulgrew), as well as its Executive Director Geofrey Sorkin. These union leaders have the power and authority to improve our dental care but, judging from the Fund’s tax returns, they have other priorities.

Table 1. Amounts for and percent change in the UFT Welfare Fund’s total revenue, benefits paid to or for members, revenue less expenses, net assets, and investments from Fiscal Year 2015-2022.

Tax documents show that the UFT Welfare Funds’s wealth has grown tremendously with little benefit trickling to union members. From Fiscal Year 2015 (when the Dental Schedule was last updated) to Fiscal Year 2022 (which ended recently in September 2023), the Welfare Fund’s total revenue increased by 24.8%. This increase is more than double the increase in benefits paid to or for members, which was only 11.6%. Stunningly, the value of its investments jumped by a whopping 212%. In short, since approximately 2016, the value of the Welfare Fund’s assets have increased by a triple digit percentage, while its benefits paid have increased by significantly less, and its maximum payments to dentists for their services have increased none at all.

Clearly, the UFT Welfare Fund has enough money to provide better dental care. It can cash out hundreds of millions of dollars of its investments to raise maximum allowances, especially for routine exams, x-rays, implants, root canals, and crowns. This would increase the number of dentists willing to take UFT, decrease the risk of being dropped by a provider, and lower out-of-pocket expenses. In the way of these improvements, however, is the union bureaucracy—which is controlled by the Unity caucus. At last night’s UFT Executive Board, of which I’m an elected member, I asked questions about our dental care that triggered the Welfare Fund Executive Director to make a passionate defense of the status quo. Clearly, the rank-and-file need a campaign against the Welfare Fund administrators who pat themselves on the back while our dental care languishes in the shadow of $800 million worth of net assets.