Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Why A NO Vote on UFT Contract is a NO Brainer, UFC Vote No Town Hall June 21

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, June 21 -- summer solstice - the longest day- and I'm off to Times square for a yoga class. And don't forget to check in on the UFC HS Ex Bd crew on the No Vote zoom tonight at 7:30 -

And see some very cute NO vote videos on Tiktok: here, here, here, and here. 

Good Morning UFTers,

You are going to read lots of analysis on the contract from the VOTE NO crowd and I'm linking to resources below. Share these with your colleagues so at least they get the full view instead of just hearing from the Unity propaganda machine. My argument, as one who has voted NO for every contract since 1970, is just do it as a demonstration of unhappiness because even Unity (other than the hardest hacks) won't argue this is one of the greatest contracts ever. I will leave it for others to get into the contract nitty gritties. I urged a NO vote a year ago - VOTE NO on Whatever Contract Unity Negotiates/ Res...

I received some grief on twitter from a Unity apologist for calling for a NO vote a year before being able to read a contract. Hey, Unity is calling for a YES vote before giving people a chance to read the contract, so why not calling for a NO vote on principle alone? 
 
I know unity leadership for 50 years. They have been incapable of delivering a decent contract since early 70s that I could vote YES. It's just not in their DNA to fight hard enough. That would take even the hint of a possible strike but they trash any talk of that as scare mongering. Just the class size issue alone plus grievance process, real protection against abusive administration, etc for non-monetary issues as we've seen an erosion of teacher autonomy and increasing micromanagement. So as long as unity is in power my vote would be NO on non-monetary stuff alone since I  had a 2 income home without children, salary never my issue.
 
An overwhelming YES vote will send an awful message of "we will accept anything, so keep shitting on us." So I start with the idea that the contract will probably pass. But it 's a real difference if 40% vs 10% vote against. So go and vote NO and assume you will still get a few below inflation bucks anyway and get another shot in 4 years.

In fact, the greater the NO vote, the better the next contract.

But what if a miracle occurs like it did in 1995 when we rejected the contract and sent them back to the bargaining table? The biggest giveback in that contract was bumping the number of years to reach top pay from 20 to 25. Six months later they came back with 22 to top salary. So that NO vote has saved generations of teachers a lot of money by not accepting that 25 year max. Imagine retirement where you average your pension over 3 years with a 25 year top? No full pensions for a lot of people who took 55-25 option.

Another NO vote occurred in essence on the retiree health care plan, as the UFT leadership led by Mulgrew and Retired Teacher chapter leader Tom Murphy, tried to sell retirees a worn down model of the Emblem MedAdv plan in the spring of 2021 - according the Mulgrew, the greatest MedAdv plan in the world - and then it was in essence voted down by the court case in the fall of 2021, which led to Emblem dropping out and Mulgrew going to Aetna for what he's admitting and selling as a much new and improved MedAdv plan over what he tried to sell us originally.

So we have samples of forcing them back to the table and seeing a better deal.

Thus the essence of my argument comes down to:
VOTE NO even if you think the contract will pass and even if you think it is not terrible to put pressure on the union leadership and the city for the future and hope that the union does some strike prep for next time, at least to present a credible threat - but  that is still wishful thinking as a strike threatens Unity jobs and even their precious teacher center jobs through the loss of dues checkoff. The biggest fear Unity has is going back to teach in the dreadful conditions they've allowed to occur in so many schools

And expect that if the NO vote actually wins out, you will end up with something better, even if a slight adjustment of making more money pensionable.

You might want to read the analysis of a math teacher at Stuyvesant HS who crunched the numbers:

Jeremy Shahom, Mathematics Teacher at Stuyvesant High School breaks down the newly proposed UFT contract. The math ain't mathing!

Op-Ed: How the Proposed Contract Attacks Our Pension and Healthcare Benefits

The other day I chronicled how Unity tried to shut down debate and harass even those who called for reading the MOU - and we heard how LeRoy Barr and Mulgrew openly lied to the DA when they insisted the MOU was up on the web and how Unity thugs almost physically attacked Nick Bacon for calling them out on it.
 
To show you how much more repressive Unity Caucus has become, the 1967 contract was debated for 4 hours at DA (I had just started teaching) and the 1995 contract had a long debate at the DA - I was there as a CL - and Pres. Sandy Feldman even allowed Bruce Markens, the only non-Unity elected District Rep (Yes, Virginia, we used to elect DRs), a long speech in opposition and they even provided the video of the debates to the schools. Many of us who were around then have come to see Sandy as being considerably better than her successors.

But despite all the evidence piling up to vote NO and despite the lame Unity arguments for YES - (we go to the back of the line, the best we can do in bad times, city money is going to dry up --It's been drying up since I joined the UFT in "67), you won't see money for a while, $bonuses, $bonuses, $bonuses (non-pensionable), don't worry about bad para pay -- just think of yourselves, etc.), their funniest argument was that the future estimate of social security inflation bonus (this year over 8%) will be 2.9% in 2024 --- so see, we got you .1 over next year's inflation even it that turns out to be true - it won't and watch Saudi Arabia jump gas prices just in time to try to make Biden lose to Trump.

Mulgrew on Brian Lehrer yesterday -- first question from retiree - let us vote on healthcare. 75% would say no. Mulgrew who me? MLC handles that. Brian could have pointed out that he has 35% of the MLC vote so why doesn't he vote the way retirees would tell him to?
 
The first call was a retiree asking why he doesn't let retirees vote on healthcare changes and he was like, Who Me? It's the MLC. To listen to Mulgrew, one could get the impression that he doesn't control the MLC, that the MLC and the UFT are entirely two separate entities. Brian either didn't know or care to challenge him on the fact that if he listened to UFT members he could have voted NO.

Here are some more sources.

NICK AT NAC

New Action Caucus has gone over the good, bad, and middling parts of the 2022-2027 tentative UFT agreement. Ultimately, we agreed that this is a contract members would be better off voting ‘no’ on.

Largely, our decision came down to sub-inflation wage ‘increases,’  including a disappointing new precedent of converting a percentage of our pay into unpensionable bonuses, as well big unanswered questions on healthcare. But we also agreed that this contract draft is disappointing in other ways that could be corrected by going back to the negotiating table. It’s not just that we didn’t meet a single of the 5 demands released by New Action in collaboration with the rest of the United for Change coalition, not to mention the demands of our larger caucus-specific list. It’s that we don’t see improvements even in places that we expected – such as special education, where we had implicit leverage but inexplicitly failed to make any major gains. It’s that one of our only workplace wins–the ability for teachers/paraprofessionals to work from home for parent engagement time–is conditional on new micromanagement and the ability for principals to take that ‘privilege’ away at a moment’s notice, without due process (a troubling new precedent).

Sifting Through the Propaganda

CONTINUE:

 
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Reasons to VOTE NO on the UFT Contract: MORE UFT Caucus

MORE UFT shares 5 big reasons to say "NO" to this tentative contract. Share these with your UFT friends and colleagues.

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From MORE

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Excellent article by Wendell Potter for The Lever on the current (grim) status of health care Inbox 

https://www.levernews.com/the-system-makes-patients-sick-and-ceos-rich/?utm_source=newsletter-email&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=newsletter-article

Wendell Potter (a 35 year health industry expert) on why the for profit health system makes patients very sick and CEO's very rich.

 

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