The UFT Welfare Fund Widens Gap Between Investments and Benefits Paid—Again

A new tax filing shows that the UFT continues to prioritize investments over services

In New York City, dental care and prescription coverage for public school educators are managed by our union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), through its Welfare Fund. In April, I argued here and at a UFT Executive Board meeting that union members are struggling with dental costs, that the Welfare Fund can afford to improve its coverage, and that the union officers, who have the authority to do so, should retain and recruit dentists by increasing their payout. I cited the Welfare Fund’s tax filings since 2016 (the last time the Dental Schedule was updated), which show that the value of its investments have climbed, while the amount it’s paid in benefits—toward things such as dental and prescription coverage—remains relatively flat (orange line in the interactive graph below). The Welfare Fund’s new tax filing confirms that, at least through September 2023, this gap has continued to widen. I and others have argued that we can both invest more in our dental coverage and maintain a healthy savings. But at the April Executive Board meeting, the April Delegate Assembly, and in a recent blog post, the Welfare Fund managers have vehemently disagreed.

Last week, Geof Sorkin, the UFT Welfare Fund Executive Director, published a rather chaotic defense on the blog of his (and President Michael Mulgrew’s) caucus, Unity. There are some claims that are worth responding to, among the ad hominems (“How can you call yourself pro-labor”), appeals to emotion (“nothing more than a campaign to scare our members”), and red herrings (“The same small group regularly uses the word “strike”) that litter his post. For example, that perhaps the demand to increase our dental spending by 75% is unreasonable. Of course, Sorkin fails to do exactly what he scolds us for supposedly not doing, that is, providing evidence for his claim that a 75% spending increase would indeed “hurt our fiscal integrity and impact what benefits we can sustain into the future.” But I’m open to a lower number. Sorkin makes other claims that pit dental care against prescription coverage, and that pose the possibility of the Welfare Fund switching dental care insurers as a better alternative to just matching what more competitive health insurance companies pay dentists.

But I feel like there’s a more basic set of questions that needs to be posed and answered. Since 2016 the value of the Welfare Fund’s investments has increased by 247%, but the value of the benefits its paid for dental care and prescription coverage increased by a measly 13%. The Welfare Fund maintains investments over twice the value of its benefits paid, a ratio which emerged only after 2019. How much investment savings is enough? How is that number decided? Before 2019, when the gap between investments and benefits paid was narrower, did that lower ratio “hurt our fiscal integrity and impact what benefits we can sustain into the future”? If not, how much money can we redistribute from the Welfare Fund’s savings to its spending on health care? If none, what trade-off are the Welfare Fund managers asking our members to make between their out-of-pocket expenses and the Welfare Fund managers’ investment strategy?