MORE Emergency Meeting to Oppose Contract - Is it too little too late?

As the UFT leadership rushes through an undemocratic process to push through a contract before an effective opposition can be built, the MORE caucus is itself rushing though a process to build momentum to oppose the contract. Today they are holding an emergency meeting at Stuyvesant HS to try to organize a coordinated response. With ballots in the process of going out to schools and due November 2 to the AAA, there is not very much time for MORE to get information into the hands of UFT members. Did the UFT rush through the process to make sure groups like MORE would not have much time to respond?

The UFT called an emergency Del Ass on a Friday afternoon, possibly offending Jewish sabboth observers instead of waiting for the regularly scheduled Del Ass today. MORE had announced that it was holding a contract organizing convention on Oct. 27 which led some of old time hands at observing the way Unity Caucus operates scratching our heads, especially since there were rumors a contract was about to be announced. Thus MORE had to rush an emergency leaflet for the DA which many MORE people did not attend and seemed content to hold its planned contract meeting on Oct 27 — until it became clear that doing so would be too little too late. Then last Friday an emergency meeting was called for today to take action. It it very little very late to waste 5 more days when there are so precious little days left to fight the contract.

Add to this that some members of the opposition are actually supporting the contract, there will be even more confusion in the schools. The active people on blogs, etc like Eterno on the ICE blog are opposing the contract. MORE’s current leadership’s efforts that resulted in splits internally in MORE, especially with the alienation of some of its most experienced members, has had an impact.

At the September MORE meeting I heard one of the new leaders of MORE express being caught by surprise by the actions of the UFT leadership, causing me to laugh out  loud. I did say that MORE should switch from advocation  and organizing for a new contract to opposition mode immediately even if they didn’t know the details of the contract just yet. The leadership seemed fine with going along with its plans for the Oct. 27 meeting for a better contract, plans almost 6 months in the making, plans now up in smoke.

As someone who has never voted in favor of a UFT contract and having been part of the fight for NO votes in the past, this battle is a lost cause but still needs to be fought to make people aware of the UFT behavior. One thing I would avoid if I were running MORE — talk about how undemocratic the process in the UFT has been since that May open up too many skeletons in MORE’s own closet as related to a democratically run caucus.

Still to come —- how to judge an overwhelming YES vote on the contract in the context if upcoming UFT elections in the spring when the very people leading the NO vote will have to try to get people who voted YES on the contract to vote NO to Unity and YES to the opposition.