Pension Misinformation in the Blogosphere

"They want you to be afraid. They want you to be angry. That is their stock-in-trade."

Michael Sill is the Assistant Secretary of the United Federation of Teachers and a member of the Unity Caucus

Over recent weeks, our pensions have been a hot topic in the UFT blogosphere. Many of you have seen the infamous yellow flyer, which claims that Mulgrew wanted to borrow money from the pension fund.

As you also now know, that is an utter fabrication. It’s a lie.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? The playbook is open for all the world to see. And it’s taken directly from Trump.

As we all know, after the 2020 election, Trump claimed that the election had been stolen. He spent the next four years repeating the lie. No matter how many times that has been debunked by election commissioners and judges of all political persuasions.

The idea was always to undermine voters’ confidence in our political institutions. You do that, and people are more ready to make decisions that would further harm the republic.

The idea behind the yellow flyer was the same. They knew damned well that nobody was looking to borrow money from the pension fund. But the lie was intended to undermine UFT members’ confidence in our institutions. It was created and promulgated by a non-UFT member, and picked up by a caucus running for election. When they got called out, the caucus pivoted to a different talking point, but they hoped the damage had already been done.

I find myself wondering if they don’t openly hope for bad things to happen to UFT members so that they can make political hay out of the moment.

They want you to be afraid. They want you to be angry. That is their stock-in-trade.

Never mind the fact that TRS has never missed a payment. Never mind the fact that the city actuary has said that TRS is fully funded right now. Never mind that if all payments stopped today, every single UFT retiree would continue to receive pension payments for the rest of their lives. Never mind that the funding of our pensions is guaranteed by the New York State Constitution.

An informed populace is a bulwark against the misuse of power. What is true for the country is true for the union. The plain truth of the matter is that our pensions are as secure today as they have ever been. And they have always been secure. The people who are telling you otherwise have an agenda. And they don’t care what kind of damage they do in pursuit of that agenda.