What are you willing to do- For The Contract We Deserve? - Guest Column from Contract Committee Member

What are you willing to do?

 

Friday, October 7, 2022

 

The UFT contract committee will meet with the city for the first contract negotiations on October 13th. 

Mayor Adam’s would like 1 to 2 percent raises max per year according to our sources at other unions. 

He has shown very little willingness to even sit down with the entire unionized city workforce that has expired contracts.

According to our brothers and sisters in DC 37 - one of the largest city worker unions, he is asking for high premiums for healthcare- in other words pay into health care which would offset any raise and actually mean a large pay cut for our members. 

The UFT position is clear : premium free, quality  healthcare and substantial raises because of inflation. 

We must have improvements in our working conditions and our students’ learning  conditions - safe schools so our youngest can learn , schools with AC as temperatures rise is way past due, class size compliance with the new legislation and more attention to special education to ensure that the city is actually serving our kids who need the most help.

We have to understand going into contract negotiation 2 major points: 

1. Contract negotiations are built on back and forth- compromise- we get some of what you want, the city has to get some of what they want. 

2. In order  to get even some of what we want, we need leverage- what do we hold over the city’s head that will actually bring them to the table and help us get some or even a majority of what we want?

That is a question the union leadership has to answer, the contract committee has to answer,  and each and everyone of you has to answer. 

What can you do, what can we do, what should we do to get what we want, what our students need? What are you going to do in your chapter that you want all chapters to do?

With inflation gone crazy, can we afford to live in NYC and the surrounding areas without a substantial raise? Can the city keep a work force without one? 

If you look at workers across the country right now; from Amazon, to Starbucks, now Apple, and Trader Joe’s - they have had to make sacrifices, they organized, they spent their free time after work, before work, on lunch breaks- risking their jobs to form unions, to have what we have now- a certified union that can collectively bargain for salary and conditions.

Some workers have been fired, other have had hours cut, many have had to hire lawyers and spend countless hours in court, while you walked into a job with a union already formed, but 50 years ago our brethren made those same same sacrifices- you have what thousands, if not millions of workers want right now- a union- nearly 200,000 strong. 

We can’ttake that for granted.

In Seattle and Ohio this past year teachers had to go on strike, they had to make the ultimate sacrifice of giving up pay, salary, food on their table, healthcare for their children, in order to get what they wanted -and they won. 

I’m not saying a strike is inevitable- what I am saying is that we have to be willing to fight for what we want, we will have to sacrifice, we will have to show the city and public our demands are real and fair. 

So we need to ask you, the person in the mirror, if we ask you to wear blue will you do it? If we ask you to call local elected officials and the mayor will you do it? If we ask to join a rally before or after school will you do it? If we ask to join a march in the city to the steps of city hall will you do it?

To show this mayor we mean business, what are you willing to do?  And yes, if we ask you to withhold your labor, stop working, go on strike as a last resort, so we can retain our healthcare , get the raises we need and have the schools our children deserve, will you do it?

 

Commentary from Norm:

 

I found the above under my car windshield wiper. The author clearly doesn't want to be accused of lifting the tarp put over the negotiating committee. I and others believe in reasonable open negotiating so the members and interested areas of the public can be moved in our direction. If there are some areas we want to keep secret - like what we would take on salary - I can live with that. But here's something that costs nothing -- redress the balance of power between the union at the school level and the administration. Strengthen the grievance procedure and protect the non-tenured. The author asks what are the members willing to do? I don't know what would work short of a strike if Adams just echos Bloomberg and flat out refuses to give us a contract for years if we don't offer givebacks to pay for it. Is the UFT leadership even capable of preparing the membership for a strike?  I will touch on that in a follow-up piece.

Healthcare givebacks are coming based on incoming info from the New Action blog and my recent exec bd meetings reports.

 

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