Bargaining for the Common Good: The UFT and the Chicago Teachers Union - A Sharp Contrast

Word is that there is a settlement of the strike, pending an agreement to make up the days. (See below for some comments on the issue of teachers not losing pay when they strike if days are made up and probably leading to some resistance from the mayor that if you strike you should have some pain.)

The mayor’s words hit at the heart of a theme that has become central to CTU’s organizing: the city’s tendency to provide bailouts and financial incentives for Wall Street and corporate entities, rather than invest in public services. Ever since the Chicago teachers staged a landmark strike in 2012, they have expanded the scope of issues — and enemies — the union is taking on, deploying a strategy known as “bargaining for the common good.”... The Intercept, How Chicago Teachers are Taking On Wall St.

This is an excellent article (see below for the entire piece) and points to the contrast between the UFT which never takes on Wall Street even if it's around the corner from our head quarters. They won't do it because I believe our union is attuned to the financial powers that be in some ways more than they are in touch with the members.

A central element of Bargaining for the Common Good is researching and identifying the banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds who are pulling the strings.

See also: The New Yorker: Chicago’s Striking Teachers Test a Progressive New Mayor

the union has emphasized the physical and emotional needs of students, including the need for more counselling and health-care staff.  .... the union’s focus on issues reaching beyond wages and benefits to include support staff who tend to the well-being of students and, by extension, their families.

I'm not so sure how "progressive" the mayor is. I mean Joel Klein and Bloomberg were viewed as "progressive." But the CTU leadership is definitely progressive - note the emphasis on the needs of students, not just teachers.

We heard for a long time that fundamental  salary issues in Chicago were settled even before the 11 day strike which is rumored to be on the verge of being settled. We just heard that the union is ready to settle if the days lost are made up. We know that means that the CTU members would not really lose any money for striking, a point made by some critics of the teacher union strikes -- that they never faced a real economic hardship for striking, unlike the GM workers who took a real loss. But if that is too our advantage  because no one wants to kids to lose learning time, then let's take advantage of it.

Oh, and let me toss in here the joke of our union battle to keep health care on the negotiation table as opposed to the single payer that would eliminate it - the threat to take health care away if the strike continues - similar to the threat made to UAW by GM. So let's keep giving them this weapon.

Let's face it. The UFT will fundamentally take the money and run with any salary package they can accept and not worry very much about improving working conditions (and imagine if we don't have to worry about negotiating for health care - but what would happen to all those jobs at the UFT welfare fund?)

That is what has been called "business unionism" as opposed to the CTU and UTLA "social justice unionism." There is a level of support for the teacher union strikes around the nation that goes beyond just getting more pay for teachers.

Let's put aside the strike concept and compare the methods being used in Chicago by the CTU which is run by a leftward social justice caucus where those ideas help push forward a progressive program as part of the bargaining the process, including pointing out where the damn money can come from, very different from here in NYC where the UFT won't touch the issue of where that enormous wealth resides. And doing so is a key to union vitality because one reason we don't ask for the vast funds we really need that go beyond salary is that our leadership is willing to let them hide the money under a rock. Doesn't it always seem the city pleads poverty whenever we have a contract, only to blossom economically the day after we ratify?

James Eterno has some commentary at http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/ today: FINES FOR STRIKING ILLEGALLY WON'T BE IMPOSED ON DEDHAM TEACHERS, UPDATE FROM CHICAGO STRIKE; COMMENTARY ON BOTH COMPARING NYC TO BOTH PLACES

Our situation here in NYC is different to some extent where strikes are not only illegal but we also get a two for one penalty, something we all came under in the 1975 strike.

(See my post:  Memory of 1975: Strike Penalties in NY Include Double Pay Fines and Loss of Tenure for a Year. 

However, what if part of the settlement was a suspension of the penalties? Ok, just dreamin'. In 1975 our leadership wanted us to suffer those penalties to teach us a lesson never to strike again. And so we haven't.

How Chicago Teachers Are Taking On Wall Street

Rebecca Burns

October 25 2019, 6:00 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2019/10/25/chicago-teachers-strike-wall-street/?fbclid=IwAR3X2IGiIAT3Co5fd5obOwEL8bWpMvVpBWroMkTuwSYoH8i_fVq_h1ADqwI

One week into Chicago’s massive school strike, tens of thousands of teachers and staff converged downtown on Wednesday to picket outside City Hall. Inside, Mayor Lori Lightfoot was delivering the first budget address of her term, which began in May, to the city council. As chants echoed from demonstrators outside, Lightfoot issued a resolute message: There is no more money to meet the strikers’ demands, which include class-size caps; more nurses, librarians, and social workers; and a pay bump for support staff making poverty wages.

Speaking to reporters following the address, Lightfoot emphasized that the city did not intend to give money to Chicago Public Schools, or CPS, which has a separate budget but whose board is appointed by the mayor.
“What we’ve been very clear about, is they’ve got to live within their means, whatever those means are and they can’t exceed that, and look to the city to bail them out,” Lightfoot told the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board.

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union, or CTU, bristled at the term. “A bailout? For smaller class size? Come on, that’s not a bailout — that’s an investment in the future of our country,” CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates shot back in an evening press conference.

The mayor’s words hit at the heart of a theme that has become central to CTU’s organizing: the city’s tendency to provide bailouts and financial incentives for Wall Street and corporate entities, rather than invest in public services. Ever since the Chicago teachers staged a landmark strike in 2012, they have expanded the scope of issues — and enemies — the union is taking on, deploying a strategy known as “bargaining for the common good.”

This time, the CTU’s 25,000 members are on strike alongside 7,500 special education assistants, custodians, and other school support staff represented by SEIU Local 73. As the strike enters its second week, a contract victory may depend on unions and their allies winning their larger political argument: that there’s plenty of money in the city, it’s just concentrated in the wrong hands.

The outcome in Chicago could also be instructive for likeminded unions. More than 50 labor and community groups are now part of a national Bargaining for the Common Good network, which aims to identify and organize against shared enemies, including Wall Street and corporate America.

“A central element of Bargaining for the Common Good is researching and identifying the banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds who are pulling the strings.”

“A central element of Bargaining for the Common Good is researching and identifying the banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds who are pulling the strings,” said Marilyn Sneiderman, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Innovation in Worker Organization. “The CTU’s demand that [public resources] be used to fund schools, not subsidize developers, is a good example of this.”

During her budget address, Lightfoot announced that she would attempt to close the city’s $838 million budget shortfall through $352 million in new revenue “rooted in progressive economic, financial, and social policy,” as well as $530 million in savings and efficiencies.

Chicago also collected a record $1.2 billion in revenue last year in Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, a controversial tool that’s supposed to funnel additional property tax dollars to “blighted” areas but that critics say is akin to a “corporate slush fund.”

Moving surpluses out of the city’s TIF funds would free up another $66 million for CPS, said the mayor, but this would only cover the contract offer she had already made to the unions. A mayoral aide told the Chicago Sun-Times that this was akin to “scraping the mayonnaise jar.”
Lightfoot’s offer to teachers before the strike began included a 16 percent pay raise over five years. Thanks to restrictive state law, the school district isn’t required to negotiate over any issues beyond pay, benefits, and the length of the school day. But through strikes and public pressure, the CTU has been able to move the needle on funding issues in the past, and they’re holding out for new guarantees on what they say are key investments in public schools.

As of Wednesday night, the CTU reported that tentative agreements had been reached in “technical” areas, such as providing translation services for parents when discussing a student’s special education plan with them. “But on the critical issues — including caps on exploding class sizes and desperate staff shortages — Mayor Lightfoot has refused to budge,” the union said in a statement.

When the teachers union first presented its contract demands in January, it acknowledged that fulfilling them would be expensive and suggested a funding source.

“Where will the money come from? Rich people,” quipped Gates, the CTU vice president.

Since then, the CTU has worked with a coalition of unions and community groups to propose a list of new taxes that could be used to generate revenue, including a financial transaction tax on the city’s central district that the teachers union has billed as “Chicago’s Wall Street.”

The CTU and its allies have also spent nearly a decade highlighting “dirty deals” with Wall Street and corporations that cost — or still cost — the city and the school district billions. Those include $1.4 billion that the city and CPS combined paid out to big banks through interest-rate swap deals that went bad after the financial crash; $1 billion in interest payments that the city will make to Wall Street investors on the estimated $700 million it borrowed to pay for police misconduct settlements between 2010 and 2017; and, most recently, more than $2 billion in TIF funds earmarked for new mega-developments.

The CTU has successfully turned two particular Wall-Street linked developers into a bête noire in the budget discussion this fall.

The CTU has successfully turned two particular Wall Street-linked developers into a bête noire in the budget discussion this fall. Lincoln Yards, a $6 billion, 55-acre mixed-use riverfront development, is backed by Lone Star Funds, a private equity giant known for buying up distressed mortgages and then foreclosing on homeowners nationwide, including in Illinois. The 78, a similarly sprawling development planned for the city’s rapidly gentrifying South Loop, is being built by a subsidiary of Related Companies, the juggernaut owned by billionaire Donald Trump fundraiser Stephen Ross, which is also behind New York City’s hotly contested Hudson Yards project.

Lightfoot has attempted to quash the notion that the planned TIF subsidies to the new developments are relevant to ongoing labor negotiations. “We cannot strike a deal based on the illusion that there’s Lincoln Yards money available that we can just shift somewhere else,” she said on Monday.
In April, two community organizations sued City Hall over the Lincoln Yards TIF, arguing that it would exacerbate racial inequality through further gentrification. A judge dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing, but the groups are planning to appeal.

The bigger issue is whether the city is actively looking for ways to claw black money from Wall Street and find new, progressive revenue sources, said Saqib Bhatti, co-executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy. It appears, so far, the answer is no.

In February, Bhatti co-authored a report identifying $3.7 billion in potential annual revenue from sources including a city income tax, a speculation tax on financial exchanges in Chicago, and a corporate use fee — enough to pay for universal early childhood education, free community college for all, free public transit, and a program to alleviate homelessness in Chicago.
The mayor’s budget address included a slightly less ambitious version of one of these options: a tax on the sale of high-end homes. But otherwise it mostly relied on “Band-Aid solutions,” Bhatti said. One of the main cost-saving options outlined by Lightfoot, refinancing a portion of city debt by issuing new general obligation and sales-tax securitization bonds, could end up leading to higher interest payments down the road.

Bhatti argues that to free themselves from Wall Street’s grip, cities should act more like unions that refuse to play by the rules as written. If they acted collectively, they would have more power to demand better terms from big banks, eventually moving toward the establishment of public banks.
“Instead of vilifying unions like the CTU that are trying to expand the scope of the issues at the table, cities like Chicago should take a page from their book,” he said. “Stop negotiating around the margins with Wall Street and corporations, and start trying to find solutions that serve the interests of our communities.”

Is There a Reality Disconnect in the UFT?

If you as an individual stand up for your rights how likely will it be for the UFT to make a strong stand for you? When I say a strong stand I don't mean advice to "file a grievance" but a political stand using its resources to make it clear the behavior of the principal is not tolerated. There are too many schools where the union at the chapter level is not functioning effectively. The UFT leadership does not seem to take a proactive posture, seemingly waiting for the teachers to take action. I would argue that the lifeblood of the union depends on them sending in competent forces to organize teachers, even if they have to do so offsite. Meaning - start by identifying key resources in the chapter and teach them organizing skills - the union I think is doing training of volunteers on how to organize their chapters. I would volunteer but they don't really want people who might drop a word of dissonance out there. They want company people. And there-in lies a problem for them. Company people don't think outside the box, which is what is desperately needed.

As Arthur says on his blog the other day:

There are schools Bloomberg started that are still full of untenured teachers. The principal says everyone's C6 assignments is doing teacher teams five days a week, and poof! You have an entire building full of teachers, all of whom are already frazzled and overworked beyond, doing something they universally detest five days a week. Sure, the contract says you can choose a C6, and the menu needs to be negotiated by the chapter, but maybe there's no chapter leader. Or maybe the principal picked someone and said, "You are the chapter leader," and no one ran against that person. Who knows? Nonetheless, in a building where no one asserts or defends the collective bargaining agreement, there may as well not be one. In a building ruled by fear, there's not a whole lot of teacher voice.

So let's look at the scenario in all too many schools Arthur lays out.

• Lots of untenured with little real protection. There could be 10K or even more --- do some math -- the last 4 years of new teachers -- they get around 3500 a year unt - in the system. Maybe 20K.
• A CL possibly chosen by the principal. 

What real, not contractual rights do untenured have, especially if the CL is playing on the other side?

Arthur makes an argument for teachers to stand up:

I'd argue that teacher voice is one thing that really makes a building special. Even the best principal can't clone everyone in his own image and expect good results. In fact, the best principal would know that and actively interact with disparate voice. It's the worst principal who treads all over everyone no matter what, and that's why we have checks and balances written into the contract. Are the checks and balances perfect? Do they always work? Of course they don't. But they are there, and it behooves us all to use them. Do you want to be in good physical shape? Then you have to exercise, one way or another. Do you want to enjoy the rights you have? You have to exercise them too.

I agree totally with the concept of defending your rights - with the caveat that you must be sure the union has your back.

Therein lies the problem - the weaning away of the union's power to respond, which has led the leadership to fundamentally blame the lack of action by the members. I get the UFT leadership frustration. They have been defanged compared to the power the UFT seemed to exert pre-Bloomberg c. 2002.

James Eterno on the ICEUFT blog constantly makes a similar plea as Arthur does - for people to stand up - but he is talking more to tenured than untentured. But read the anonymous comments to see how scared even the tenured are.

My old ICE pal, Under Assault, a former middle school CL has a few interesting posts that touch on the issues:

• A parenthetical update on teaching music

• More on our disingenuous, tone-deaf leadership

The UFT leadership sat idly by while Bloomberg equipped the principals with enormous power, while reducing our protections in the 2005 contract.

The weakest link in the UFT is often the district reps who have been chosen instead of elected since 2002. Before that they were elected on the district level by the chapter leaders and were thus held somewhat accountable to the most vulnerable people. The leadership doesn't trust this process which might put some political undesirables from their point of view in these positions.

The prime example was Bruce Markens who broke historic ground by being an anti-Unity elected district rep in the Manhattan high schools who was re-elected over a 10 year period from 1990-2000. He is the major reason the union killed the elections. The only way Bruce could get elected was that the majority of CLs were not pro-Unity and Bruce became a center of opposition voices, even though he never affiliated with any formal opposition. The prime example in the 1995 contract when Bruce, nominally an employee of the UFT made a very public stand in opposition and played a role in the only defeat in history of a UFT contract.

I can see their point for why they feel they cannot deal with another Bruce Markens as a district rep in today's times. But on the other hand, the UFT is weaker by not having independent district reps at its root level.

Now don't get me wrong. Some DRs are pretty good but always working inside serious constraints like make nice with the Superintendent.

They are between a rock and a hard place.

Transit Workers Rally

Norm

We are beyond excited to join TWU Local 100 workers today in solidarity in the fight for a fair contract and holding the MTA accountable.
Bernie gave us a nice tweet of support.

We will have a handful of volunteers out today from all different unions, passing out palm cards and growing our rank and file movement. Senator Sanders even sent out an e-mail to his supporters about coming today.

Will you be joining us today at 5:00pm at 2 Broadway in Manhattan? Let us know.


NY Labor For Bernie

Rally of CSA Oct. 30 at City Hall, 5 PM - Fair and Equal Contract for School Leaders?

THE CHANCELLOR SENDS  US LOVE LETTERS AND EMPTY PLATITUDES BUT REFUSES TO GIVE US A CONTRACT.  RIDICULOUS....WE ARE THE LEADERS OF OUR CITY’S SCHOOLS, yet we are  left without a contract for months on end. STAND UP AND JOIN US!!!!.....---  Council of School Supervisors & Administrators

Norm - You should let teachers know to regularly check www.csa-nyc.org for useful information. They make their newsletters public: www.csa-nyc.org/csa-news. Incidentally, CSA stands for “Council of School Supervisors & Administrators” and not “Council of Supervisor Associates.” It used to stand for “Council of Supervisors & Administrators,” but then they added “School” into the name of their Union. For whatever reason, they didn’t rename the short form as “CSSA” when they made the above change.... since the UFT and CSA are locals of the AFL-CIO, that's probably why the UFT won't generally go after rotten, incompetent, and abusive supervisors.-- anon.

Eterno comments: the CSA's rather lukewarm notice for their rally says, "How many non-CSA members do you anticipate bringing along?" Non CSA members? Are principals going to order their non-tenured staff to accompany them and support them? No, they wouldn't do that. Just kidding. 

When I told a retired teacher and former ATR about this rally he said me might come - and boo. He even wanted to organize a counter rally. Yes, a lot of teachers are pissed at supervisors and the way the CSA takes no role in controlling even the worst of them. (Contrary to the UFT which often lets its members swing in the wind.) The UFT leadership has said it can't be too critical of supervisors because the CSA is another union and they have to respect that - like teachers get respect for being in the UFT.
 
Personally I don't think people supervising other union members can be considered a union. I also don't think we need principals - teachers should run their schools.

Some of my readers may LOL at this but I do know a great guy who is a great principal and supportive of teachers and our union and he sent me this on a rally the CSA is organizing for their contract. By the way, I rarely if ever hear about abusive principals in his district and I believe if he hears of issues he wouldn't be quiet. They are using the settlement of our contract as an argument:

Curriclulum Fair - MORE Does Something Right - Saturday Nov 2

This Saturday MORE and other social justice teacher groups, including my favorite, Teachers Unite, are holding a

Curriculum Fair and Social Justice Town Hall!

I think this is a great idea - they held a very successful one two years ago that I volunteered to assist with.

I've been pretty critical of MORE since I gave up the ghost almost a year ago. My major critique was that they weren't really a caucus - which I define as a group contending for power with the ruling faction and building broad based alliances inside the union to accomplish that aim, even with people you may not agree with on some issues. MORE is a social justice group and is interested in bigger issues than just how teachers in the classroom are affected.

And that is where Unity Caucus is at its weakest. Protecting teachers in the classroom from principals with way too much power, ceded by the UFT.

On social justice issues it is harder to pin down where Unity falls down, though inside the left in the UFT there is a lit of criticisms of Unity on those grounds - and there is a point - look at the Chicago teacher union demands in this strike where salary is not an issue. The UFT would have taken the money and run a long time ago.

At one of my last meetings I said MORE was fundamentally a closed club (which pissed people off) of people with like interests. Actually I was fine with that and could be a happy member of such a group. But that concept is contrary to an electoral caucus and I was totally against MORE running alone and dividing whatever opposition to Unity that existed. And so it came to pass, a fractured opposition with the group MORE pushed out gravitating towards Unity, the only game in town.


I wonder what might have happened if MORE went to the union for support in this curriclum fair and even offered them a table? Too much bad blood at this time. My argument was that if MORE didn't run that left open more possibilities for the club -- with a wide variety of people while staying true to its principles.

Maybe the MORE brain trust is realizing that and is focusing on its main interests - social justice and curriculum certainly affects teachers in the classroom. I do wonder how much room teachers today have to innovate curricula but why not give it a try? If I'm in the city I might even stop by.

The culturally relevant and sustaining education curriculum fair and town hall is one week away! Please join us for a day of sharing curriculum, music, social justice workshops, and relationship building with educational justice groups

Register here!
Saturday, November 2nd – 10AM – 3PM at City-As-School at 16 Clarkson St. in Manhattan – Detailed Schedule below
Lunch will be provided (for a suggested donation) – please indicate your dietary needs when you register so we can accomodate. Free childcare available – please pre-register so we can anticipate need. Event is wheelchair accessible.

Activist groups presenting at the town hall include: Teachers Unite, NYCORE, Black Lives Matter in Education Week of Action, Teens Take Charge, Integrate NYC, New Settlement Houses Parent Action Committee, as well as CEC members and parent leaders from around the city.

Workshops during the morning include: School Counseling & LGBTQ issues, Equity and Access for LGBTQ students, LatinX Literature, Dance and Social Justice, Teachers’ unions in the fight for curriculum, Bomba Yo performance, Displacement and gentrification, Social justice through music, Supporting immigrant students, Poetry & Hip Hop as Identity and Community

Schedule for the day is as follows:

9:00 AM	Set up / Volunteers Arrive
9:30	Check in for workshop presenters / sharing curriculum
10:00:-10:30	Welcome & Registration, Bomba Yo performance
10:30-12:00	Tabling, Workshops, Performances
10:30-11:10	Session 1 of Workshops
11:20-12:00	Session 2 of Workshops
12:00-1:00pm	Lunch Break / Music
1:00-1:15	Begin Town Hall
1:15-2:00	Town Hall: Relationship building activity/shareout
2:00-3:15	Town Hall: Presentations from activist groups / share out
3:15-4:00	Cleanup

NYC Labor for Bernie Aims to Raise Profile in Unions

I attended my first Labor for Bernie (L4B) meeting last week which was held at 50 Broadway, ironically a building owned by the UFT. There were union members from a variety of NYC unions - DC37, iron workers, Transit, Teamsters, UAW -  with the biggest contingent being from the UFT. That group included a few of my former MORE colleagues - and I made sure to keep my back against the wall at all times.

It is hard to come up with a general approach to pushing Bernie as a candidate in unions depending on the general views of the members, the level of control exerted by the leadership, and other factors. For instance, there was a Transit Worker guy there (oh, and let me point out that this meeting was overwhelmingly male - and white). He pointed out that the former head of the TWU had endorsed Bernie but he was now head of the national TWU so there was now a different dynamic.

There was someone there who worked with the Teamster opposition faction, Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), but the Teamsters are not viewed as a whole as Bernie territory. But I found out that Teamsters rep many work areas, including some college teachers and nurses.

It was interesting that the meeting was being chaired by the same guy from MORE who chaired so many of their meetings, one of the more recent recruits to MORE over the past two years from the Democratic Socialists (DSA) who worked with the ISO faction in the purges and takeover. I assume the moves inside L4B is part of the overall strategy of the MORE/DSA group. Watch for a campaign around this issue coming out of MORE.

I had been aware of L4B due to the work of Mindy Rosier, who has been on the Bernie team from Day 1 and was a delegate to the 2016 Dem convention, one of those who were pretty critical of the Randi/AFT/UFT early support for Hillary.

Mindy is another ex-MORE who found the actions of the current MORE leadership pretty despicable and has now joined Unity and was elected to the Ex Bd which is so interesting given that the UFT leadership is so anti-Bernie. We know they will never back Bernie and we know that Mindy will try to be a delegate to the Dem convention where Randi is a super delegate. That should be fun.

One experience of the progressives pushed out of MORE who had been anti-Unity has been that if the opposition acts as bad or worse than the union leadership, why not go with them? I personally don't agree with that point and in fact find myself in more agreement with positions MORE takes but can't support them because of their leadership.

So there is this interesting dynamic of the undemocratic socialists of MORE (USoM) pushing a line in the UFT that the AFT should have a democratic process in choosing the presidential nominee. Former MOREs are snickering and doing LOLs. I keep thinking of a dog biting its own tail.

Mindy is enormously popular inside the L4B crew due to her hard work over the years. As someone new to this group I will follow wherever Mindy goes politically. If she works with the MOREs I will bite the bullet and join her. As the UDoMs push for a "fair" process inside the UFT it will be fun to watch how things play out.

The UFT, Biden, Bernie, Warren and Labor 4 Bernie

Biden's speech was meh and didn't elicit much enthusiasm ---- an audience member at Teacher Union Recognition Day, Oct. 20, 2019

We were clear that because Biden was available it no way means we are endorsing him. This in no way means we don’t

want others to come. As soon as we can get them here, we will. ... Leroy Barr at UFT Ex Bd

Right. Biden just happened to have a day free. When I saw that Joe Biden was going to address a thousand teachers (most of them from Unity Caucus) at Union Recognition Day, I felt that was clearly sending a message to the members. If the UFT had Bernie at an event like this I would be shocked. I believe the UFT/AFT would fundamentally sit the election out rather than support Bernie Sanders because of its long history of anti-leftism going back to its founding.

The AFT/UFT will be putting up some bogus "democratic" process, unlike last time when they endorsed Hillary before anyone could breathe and took some heat for it. I know how they operate. Randi will make the choice again and then work backwards to make it look democratic. 

Is there any doubt that Bernie has consistently been the most pro-union politician while the Democrats caved on union support for decades?

MORE Slammed for Undemocratic Actions - Education Notes

I am publishing this excerpt from Arthur's blog in the hard copy of Ed Notes which I distribute at Delegate Assemblies. I didn't agree with his entire blog post and will comment on those aspects in the future. But I agree totally with his analysis of MORE and myself was the victim of undemocratic acts when I was suspended for 6 months for daring to repeat something that happened at a MORE meeting. My suspension is supposedly over but I'm not going back to that hot mess.

Former Member Slams MORE on Undemocratic Actions

By Arthur Goldstein, CL Francis Lewis HS, Ex Bd Member

Excerpted from http://nyceducator.com/2019/10/two-unions-in-puerto-rico-and-only-one.html

I've been observing union and union leadership pretty closely for a few years now. No one's perfect, and there are flaws in every organization. There are some UFT employees I like more than others. MORE, though, has crossed lines in ways that go far beyond the pale. A group of us worked very hard to have our voices heard within the UFT. We planned and schemed, and then we put our plans and schemes into action. We won Ex. Bd. seats. This was remarkable.

However, a group within MORE considered our victory "a disaster." I've seen them refer to us as "right-wingers" in writing. Evidently, that's what you are if you don't subscribe to their particular philosophy, whatever on earth that may be. They were horrified when I brought a resolution supporting smaller class sizes to the UFT Executive Board. Why didn't I run it by the Steering Committee, which they controlled?

When this small, self-important steering committee found themselves term-limited, they took a page from Michael Bloomberg and tried to remove the limits. For whatever reason, they failed in that effort. Once they were replaced, they moved to dump all their replacements. They couldn't be bothered with their own by-laws or anything, did whatever they wanted, and managed to lose 80% of their support in the next UFT election. I'm very comfortable determining they don't appear to believe in democracy. They fractured opposition so decisively I determined it to be a waste of time.

I saw a real vision in what was left of MORE, and the vision was this--we do whatever we want, however we want, whenever we want, and if we lose elections by a landslide because we alienate the overwhelming majority of our former supporters, we're good with that. Hey, if they only want to mix with people who buy their particular brand of socialism, or whatever they call it, that's fine. But if you want to reach UFT members, if you want to organize and change things for working teachers, you need to be willing to talk to everyone. You need to be willing to have conversations with people who aren't limited to your particular ideology, whatever it may be.

I'd argue that people who can't tolerate opposing points of view, who won't mix with those who have differing points of view, who blindly condemn those with whom they likely have more in common than not are fanatics. A lack of tolerance like that is not likely to accomplish a whole lot. I'd rather work with people who can and will make change. In 2019, on this astral plane, that's the UFT leadership. In fact, as opposition, the only way I ever got anything done was by working with leadership.

Health Care: Are union leaders giving us ALL the facts?

I am publishing this excerpt the hard copy of Ed Notes which I distribute at Delegate Assemblies and will be doing so today. Thanks to a former ICEUFT founder Julie Woodward who spent considerable time assisting with this article and clarified so much about the issue. Before working with her I was waffling on single-payer but she has made herself into an expert

and assists people with health care issues. Julie has brought back her blog and is focusing on the medicare debates. Here is her latest:

Under Assault: teaching in NYC

Is your union backing Medicare for All? Ours not so much

Health Care:

Are union leaders giving us ALL the facts?

By Norm Scott

I will be reporting on health care in what it means for UFT members in these special editions of Ed Notes for the delegate assembly, in addition to my blog, ednotesonline.com.

All sides of the political equation recognize that our health care system is a mess, with costs double and with poorer outcomes than other advanced nations. Yet, I’m still not clear on where our local and national unions actually stand. There is understandable confusion about various versions of “Medicare for all,” each with very different implications. “Medicare for all” is misleading because people think it means merely extending Medicare for those 65 and over to the entire population - a system that includes major roles for private insurance, co-pays and deductibles. Original Medicare has left over costs that must be paid out of pocket but there are a variety of supplemental plans available through mostly for-profit companies, with a variety of premiums depending on the type of coverage.

Bernie Sanders is talking about a very different system based on a simpler design, one that eliminates the ACA,  Medicare, and much of the private insurance industry (with is duplicative administrative costs, high salaries, and faulty incentives) and creates an entirely new tax structure. We’ve seen this kind of massive structural innovation before — with Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965 — and most people would fight hard to keep these programs until something even more efficient, universal, and protective comes along. The Sanders (Senate)/Jayapal (House) 2019 legislation currently in Congress also includes long-term care and other benefits. 

Some unions have endorsed Bernie’s total restructuring bill (National Nurses United (NNU). Other union leaders (our own included) and politicians have raised red flags, claiming the elimination of private insurance would make us lose our “much-loved” union negotiated plans and have backed a range of so-called “medicare-for-all” situations, including for-profit insurance, employer coverage, and public options. What they’d leave us with are the same bad players, and a variety of compromises that continue to feed at the public trough.

People think they like their plans, but they really like their doctors and hospitals.  Most people gripe consistently about the hoops they have to go through with their plans. They hate their copays.  They hate their huge deductibles.  The only time they reach a true comfort zone with their plan is when they get a very expensive operation or hospital stay, when the contrast is so very obvious between what they DO pay and what they WOULD HAVE HAD to pay if they didn't have a plan.

We are told we have given  up salary for decades in exchange for health care benefits and won’t be able to negotiate on health care in the future. Is that what we want to do instead of focusing on salary and working conditions instead of having to make choices to divert funds for those purposes to health care? Remember our 2014 contract where we agreed to help save the city billions on costs which has led to some reductions in coverage, with possibly more to come?

President Mulgrew pointed to the AFT taking a position in favor of “Medicare for all,” but that has been muddled. An article in Jacobin asked:  Why Is Teachers Union President Randi Weingarten Attacking Medicare for All?... Weingarten pulls her bait and switch; different versions of medicare for all, including plans “that preserve a role for commercial insurance,” are actually all the same, she argues, and are just different paths to universal coverage. Weingarten, wrote a recent piece in Politico: The false choice over Medicare for All: We can have both private health insurance and an expanded role for government. She argued for pretty much every plan, obfuscation at best. A role for private insurance  (five times the administrative costs of public plans) leaves a lot of money on the table for profit with executives and investors making millions of dollars and with much higher turnover of employees with less knowledge, poor response times and poorer general service.

Here's the crux of Randi's waffling. She wrote. "Easing the stranglehold private insurance companies have on the market and preserving the option for employers and unions to continue to innovate in health care is critically important… Unions can actually help navigate the transition to a health care system that works for more people, and we can help hold employers accountable for working with providers and employees to find cost savings without diminishing benefits."

    

Easing the stranglehold? A single-payer plan eliminates the stranglehold instead of easing it. Randi says "Preserve the option to innovate," while single player doesn’t play footsie with corporations.  They want corporations out of the picture.

In fact the Sanders plan offered in 2017 (improved in the current bill) was analyzed by a team of economists from the University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). They found that it is not only economically viable, but could actually reduce health consumption expenditures by about 9.6 percent while also providing decent health care coverage for all Americans.

I was first convinced about single-payer by my wife who spent decades handling billing issues for a major hospital and dealt with every private and public insurance company. She maintained without a doubt that the most efficient and responsive people were those who worked for the Medicare system. There were long-term professionals while the private insurers were often clueless. It was her practical experience, not some ideology, that convinced her, and me, that only a single-payer government financed plan would create a much better healthcare for all.

Resources: UFT activist/blogger Julie Woodward, now retired, has specialized in assisting people with Medicare issues and her blog, Under Assault underassault.blogspot.com, has been brought back from dormancy to deal with the politics of Medicare for All. Last week I attended a presentation/debate on Medicare for all at The CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies with a fabulous presentation by Robert Pollin (www.peri.umass.edu/economists/robert-pollin).

Republicans and Jacobin Attack Warren After Finishing Biden Off

The Republican National Committee said Tuesday that Ms. Warren had been “caught lying.”.....

In a post on Twitter last week, Meagan Day, a writer for the socialist magazine Jacobin, drew attention to an interview Ms. Warren gave in 2007 in which she discussed the end of her career as a public-school teacher and did not describe being forced out because she was pregnant.... NYT - Elizabeth Warren Details Her Account of Losing Teaching Job Because of Pregnancy

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-fired-pregnant.html

I still favor Bernie but Wow: RNC and Jacobin tag team Warren to brand her a liar. Since Jacobin/DSA "Bernie or Bust" has seen Biden fade after the Trump attacks and has now joined the right wing Trumpites in an attack on Warren. Frankly, these campaigns, sometimes bordering on hysteria -- like how DARE the press actually say Bernie had a heart attack --  have begun to turn some leftist Bernie supporters off. I went to the original Meagan Day tweet and note how disparaging it is toward Warren (by the way, the Jacobin/DSA crowd attacks on both Hillary (deserved) and Warren, two prominent women, are also giving some women thoughts that there is something valid in the attacks of some Bernie Bros turning off progressive women.

 

The ref to Jacobin caught my eye since I started hearing the same attack on right wing radio - Bernie and Sid - did this hit job the other day as they switch from Biden attacks and now go after leading Dem candidates one by one as they become a threat. The essence of the attack was that Warren did not really face firing over being pregnant in 1971 despite a lot of proof that this was policy in many schools -- the idea of kids seeing a pregnant teacher might cause trauma.

So left wing press like Jacobin and some in DSA are playing pin ball with the right - with similar intent I believe -- right wingers to leave their Trump as the only candidate and the left to leave Bernie as the only candidate -- and I believe some on the left would rather see Trump win than any Democrat other than Bernie.

A DSA memo disparaged the impeachment movement with the usual attack on Dems. A prominent left wing supporter of Bernie surmised this was about:  

Making sure there's no pro-Democrat option if Bernie loses.
The logic is, in effect, to try to stop any potential left-center coalition after the primaries, ie. promoting Bernie-or-Bust - as if we'll have another choice besides the Democratic nominee in November 2020, whoever that is. We won't.

Reality check for ultra-left: Reports about Bernie cutting back on campaigning:  

• https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/464928-sanders-says-hell-slow-down-on-campaign-trail-after-heart-attack 
• https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/us/politics/bernie-sanders-heart-attack.html

It may turn out to be Warren or Bust with Bust being Trump. But watch the attacks on Warren continue.

 

Here is the original Meagan Day tweet

@meaganmdayOct 1

All over the internet you can find people calling Elizabeth Warren a "former public school teacher" and saying it was her "first career." Warren was a public school teacher for one year. She immediately left the classroom, went to law school, and became a law professor. Come on 

The NYT article fundamentally supported Warren's claim she was if not openly fired, sent a message she wasn't wanted when she became noticably pregnant:

Historically, it was common for American teachers to be pushed out of their jobs during pregnancy, either through termination or the requirement of an unpaid leave of absence. In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled some of these policies unconstitutional. But not all such policies were explicitly written down and tracked, giving many female teachers little legal recourse....

Ms. Warren told CBS News that she had been hiding her pregnancy.

“I was pregnant, but nobody knew it,” she said. “And then a couple of months later when I was six months pregnant and it was pretty obvious, the principal called me in, wished me luck and said he was going to hire someone else for the job.”... The Republican National Committee said Tuesday that Ms. Warren had been “caught lying.”

Want to read more Jacobin attacks on Warren from the left?

Elizabeth Warren’s Public Education Problem By Eric Blanc

The Sanders Climate Plan Can Work. Warren’s Can’t. By Carl Beijer

 

The left has been attacking Warren for her former positions and the disturbing choices to give TFA people a role in her campaign. But I also found some Bernie baggage, a former major ed deformer.

Nina Turner, Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Chair, Led Charge for Education Reform as Ohio Legislator

And here is another Bernie backer, a woman, on differentiating Bernie from Warren, which is not a bad thing if done honestly instead of looking like a right wing hit job.  From The Bern Identity
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1177039402997956608.html.

Memo from the RTC: A few Parting words from The Great Gatsby

Last show today and it is sold out.

Supporting actors: Danielle Rose Fischer (Lucille), Jose Velez (George), Samantha Caiati (Myrtle), Nick Baytler (Chester), Fred Grieco (Meyer).

Leads: left to right: Tiffany Faulkner (Jordan), Steven Wagner (Nick), Nona Varano (Daisy), Nick Safier (Gatsby), John Squires (Tom).

Memo from the RTC: A few Parting words from The Great Gatsby
By Norm Scott
The WAVE - Oct. 4, 2019 -

Trump Gets What He Wants: Impeachment will still leave him standing while cutting Biden at the knees.

With Biden at one point looking like the most dangerous to Trump, his actions make perfect sense. Push out story after story about how corrupt Joe is even if risking impeachment by the Dems in the House, knowing full well he will not be convicted in the Senate. Thus he runs again against a preferred candidate like Warren or even Bernie, whose own prospects aren't looking too good lately, especially with his heart issue that might create just enough doubt to move less faithful votes toward Warren or another candidate. Bernie is the oldest candidate in the race.

But Biden has not only been under attack from Trump.
The left/progressive wing of the Dems have also been going at him since he declared. And other shaky moments have shown the Trump strategy may have only escalated the situation against Biden and might actually give Warren a quicker path, thus actually making the process or running against Trump somewhat easier for her if her momentum holds up.

I'm still for Bernie but am annoyed as some of the stridency of Bernie or Bust -- Bust means Trump. Warren has been under attack from the Bernie left/Jacobin crowd who are throwing the kitchen sink against her: she's a deceiver, she takes big money and tells others not to, her education plan is bad, she stole Bernie's ideas, she is a Hillary plant - etc.

There are serious issues with Warren on education and Bernie's plan is much better and Bernie we know is adamantly pro-union since forever and when he shows up on a picket line we know he means it. But there has also been an article circulating about Bernie's top assistant Nina Turner who supposedly was involved in a big way in ed deform in Cleveland, with views that compare with Warren's old ed views, posted on the Intercept.

Nina Turner, Bernie Sanders’s Campaign Chair, Led Charge for Education Reform as Ohio Legislator

Here is a pro-Warren piece in Esquire: What We Learn from Elizabeth Warren.
 
Trump and crew may be laughing at the idea of how he can mock and rattle her plus the idea that there are a lot of men and many women who will not vote for a woman plus the center Dems who are very nervous over Warren.

It is a mistake for Dems to think that any one of them can beat Trump and that he is weakened so much now. But Warren at this point is looking like she can take him on. Hillary still got 66 million votes and Warren doesn't carry her baggage.

However, if Warren look real strong, the Trump/Republicans will swiftboat her with anything they can dig up. And if they can't dig something up they will make stuff up and be believed by their core.

Then there are the rumors of Hillary sitting in the wings to rep the center Dems if things go sour -- she thinks all she has to do is flip not that many votes from last time and many people who sat it out will come back after the Trump years. I even commented on a socialist FB page how I still prefer her to Trump.

There is another angle. Trump gets convicted in the Senate due to some Republicans seeing a better path for them with Pence as president running in 2020. An interesting article in Politico explores this idea.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/02/pence-trump-president-2020-228903

School Scope: On Warren, Bernie, health and education

School Scope:  Ed News to Use

By Norm Scott 

Submitted for publication in The WAVE for Oct. 4, 2019

Last week I wrote about the cheating scandal in Maspeth HS where kids were allowed to graduate if they fog a mirror and how the powers that be in the DOE and the UFT turn the other way because high grad and test score numbers make them look good. This week’s revelations are that di Blasio also knew about it and ignored it. Duhhhhhh!

Others stories broke around: “The chancellor reiterated his support this week for “formative assessments” — which he has said would be offered four times a year — to help the education department understand whether students are mastering material across the system in “real time,” Carranza’s Four Exam Plan Raises Student Overtesting Fears –

http://thecity.nyc/2019/09/carranzas-exam-plan-is-overtesting-for-students-critics-say.html. Prepping for test this way is just another form of cheating.

The Chicago teachers union voted by 94% for a strike. Many consider the union’s 2012 strike as being the spark that not only set off teacher strikes around the nation, but strikes in other unions like the General Motors autoworkers, which have been on strike for weeks. Some Dem candidates have rushed to union rallies. The Democratic Party, which despite labor support had been ignoring the broad interests of labor for decades, which some view as having led to enough defections in swing states to have elected Trump, has been rushing to show support for unions. But those of us who watched the Dems in-action are always suspicious because the leaders of the Party also owe allegiance to the corporate world, which has much antipathy to unions. These kinds of internal conflicts play out in many ways inside the party.

Reports surfaced that corporate heads have told Dem party leaders that if Warren were to get the nomination they would either sit the election out or support Trump. Note that these people don’t really think Bernie has any real chance and if they did they would be in an even greater panic. Paul Krugman took on this issue in an Oct. 1 column in the NYT, Warren vs. the Petty Plutocrats. Interesting to see Krugman, who used to trash Bernie and praise Hillary and the Democratic center, move further left.

But Warren, now that she is in a good position, built on her using many of Bernie’s ideas, has supposedly been giving party leaders some  assurances that she could be worked with, unlike the uncompromising Bernie, while some of his backers have gone on the attack against Warren. One of the big issues has been her sketchy record on supporting public education and teachers. Education progressives have been concerned over her history, as evidenced by this story the other day in the left wing Jacobin, a big Bernie supporter: Elizabeth Warren’s Public Education Problem. (https://jacobinmag.com/2019/09/elizabeth-warren-education-public-schools)   Bernie’s education plan is more in line with where I stand but I try to live in a real world and in this election other than a few awful candidates on education (Booker, Wang) I will live with Warren and hope that if she won, the support of teacher unions will counter the backing of the ed deform educational industrial wing of the party like Democrats for Educational Reform(DFER).

Private health insurance have 20% admin costs and can afford to slap their names on stadiums while Medicare has 2% admin costs. Every dime they make in profit comes off our backs. Yet, my union, the UFT and its national, the AFT, has joined other unions by taking a centrist position on the health care issue, repeating the argument that union members would lose their current health plans that they are supposedly so in “love” with. I think our union leaders are wrong. All unions members who turn 65 “lose” their plans and go into Medicare while continuing their former primary plan as supplementary, which we still need under Medicare. There are few if any complaints.

On the surface many candidate plans seem similar. A friend of mine studying the issue clarified: "Medicare as we know it should never be confused with Medicare for All. Our Medicare is totally entwined with private industry -- for supplemental coverage (Medigaps and Medicare Advantage) and for drugs (totally for-profit companies, and the feds will dump a penalty on you if you don't enroll in one).  We pre-pay into it all our working lives, and continue to pay through extra plans, substitute plans, and copays/coinsurance. Bernie is offering something new:  Single payer.  Bernie's April bill, though called ‘Medicare for All’, is designed totally differently from ours and proposes an entirely new tax structure.  It will not coexist inside the current one, like our Medicare does.”

All of Norm’s columns appear at ednotesonline.com and have 0 admin costs.