Retired Teacher Chapter Meeting Update - Unity Caucus Wins Chapter Election - DUHHH!

Wednesday, June 14, 8 AM

Today's Delegate Assembly has been postponed until next week pending the Janus decision (Lack of Decision as Yet on Janus Causes UFT to Post...).

I attended the final retired teacher chapter meeting yesterday for some crazy reason -- it was a gorgeous day.

I wanted to touch base with Lisa North, who opposed Tom Murphy for chapter leader, and Gloria Brandman who helped organize and coordinate the work we have been doing with New Action and Retiree Advocate people recently.

I also like Scott Stringer because he put Patrick Sullivan on the PEP and he was the guest speaker. Scott got a rousing reaction when he reminded us of the support the UFT gave him when he defeated Eva Moskowitz for Manhattan borough president before she began her charter career, partly I think to get revenge on the UFT. And in fact Eva and her non-unionized 50 charter schools has cost the UFT more members than Janus will.

Stringer compared the city and state pension systems. He has to consult with the unions in decision making on investments which he believes is a good thing -- compared to the state where the comptroller has sole decision making power. He said our pensions were 70% funded.

I got an important phone call related to Evil Eva and Success while Stringer was answering questions and had to go outside to take the call (more on this angle in a future post) and the meeting ended while I was on the phone.

Gloria, Lisa and I got to hang out after the meeting and talk about our own situation in ICE and MORE.

(A group of people in MORE sent a public email on the MORE Listserve asking the 3 of us to basically leave MORE or choose between ICE and MORE. As founders of ICE and MORE and having put 6 years of effort into MORE, we ignored them. Some of them have been in MORE for 10 minutes.)

One of the interesting aspects of RTC meetings is what they call "Good and Welfare" where anyone can get up and say something. Chapter leader Tom Murphy announced that G and W would be put up front of the meeting instead of the end when people are leaving. I've been asking for a feature like this for MORE Meetings but have been ignored. So it was interesting to see an RTC meeting run with more openness than the usual MORE Meetings. But more on MORE and democracy in future posts.

(A wise person who left MORE recently told me - if MORE is going to be like Unity at least Unity has the toys.)

The results of the recent UFT Retiree chapter election between the Unity slate and the Retiree Advocate/MORE/New Action slate went according to form. I wrote about the election here: VOTE Retiree Advocate: Current UFT Retiree Chapter...

19,084 - 30% - voted out of the over 60,000 ballots sent out.  Unity received 82- 83%, or 15,334 while our slate got 3405 votes -- 17-18%. This falls in line with the outcomes of general UFT elections and is a key point in why Unity will always win. There is no way to make a dent in the retiree vote.

Most important is that Unity gets to fill all 300 seats at the Delegate Assembly while we get none. In fact Unity has a lot of trouble getting 300 retirees to want to go to a DA every month and they only show in rare occassions when called out for a vote Unity is worried about.

In a proportional rep system we would get 18% of the delegates, which would be about 36 -- and our people would show. It would get me and Eterno and Gloria and Lisa and the New Action crew back in the DA -- which is why you will never see proportional rep in the UFT. Is it democratic to shut out even 17% of the voices? Those 3400 people who voted for us have their voices stilled.