UFT Retiree Chapter Update: Retiree Advocate Takes Control

Saturday, July 13, 2024

The reality of winning the RTC chapter election began to strike home on July 1 and a follow-up meeting on July 8 when elected Retiree Advocate officers met with UFT officials to discuss transfer of control. All ten officers were given UFT ID cards and CL Bennett Fisher given and two auxiliary cubicles on the 17th floor of 52 Broadway. Bennett has already been going in most days to answer emails and deal with other business. After some negotiations he will be on a salary equivalent to what Tom Murphy earned.

Let me remind you the RTC has 70,000 members, by far the largest group in the UFT. And we now have to deal with managing the chapter for the next three years with a steep learning curve. But I feel our team is up to it, especially Bennett who wanted to win so badly because he was confident he could do the job. Even our internal group who have worked with Bennett over the past 6 years since he retired, have been impressed with the way he has taken charge. I know I could never have managed and would have put a pillow over my head.

Now if you've been reading this blog you know I never expected to win.

• Norm Handicaps the 2024 Retiree Chapter Election - 35% is bad, 45% and above is a winning formula going forward

But Bennett did. And so did Arthur, who is one of the ten officers.

The Retiree UFT Chapter, now under the control of Retiree Advocate Caucus which has replaced Unity Caucus for the 10 officer, 15 exec bd and 300 delegates, goes way beyond the relatively small group of RA organizers and supporters and we must keep in mind that the RTC is NOT RA, something Unity often forgot. In fact many of the people who won with us are not members of RA but independents.

We do not intend to forget that we represent 70k not a few hundred and must act accordingly. The monthly RTC meetings at 52 Broadway are not RA meetings and we must give voice to all factions in the UFT, including Unity - if they have anything to say. But they will have a voice - after all they got 37% of the vote.

RTC meetings will be run very differently. I am interested in helping plan those meetings and make them  more meaningful and informative. I've already had long conversations with Bennett and we have some exciting ideas. Meetings should be somewhat fun to attend. 

At this point, we view the top 25 electeds - the officers and exec bd as a governing body of the RTC, not rubber stamps as Tom Murphy used them. Our group is eclectic with varying views and we always won't agree but that's good. Diversity of opinion.

A bigger job is organizing the 300 delegates, some of whom do not live in the New York area but can attend the DA remotely. If even 50 show up, that will have a significant impact on the DA, especially if linked up with the working delegates. This is not about just showing up but showing up in an organized and meaningful manner. There will always be the wild cards who have their own personal agendas and expect some cringe moments at the DA.

As for RA, our relatively small organizing committee must continue to meet and grow the caucus to meet future needs. We won this with almost no budget. It would be nice to have greater outreach - dues are only about $25 a year. We also must keep our facebook page while also managing the UFT retiree FB page in a non-partisan manner, unlike Unity which cut critical comments. We welcome critical comments.

Some people ask how it RA structured. Since its founding over 30 years ago, RA has been run by a small committee. Some of the original founders have died and the leadership passed into new hands around 8 years ago when Gloria Brandman, Lisa North, Prudence Hill Ellen Fox and myself, all in MORE at the time, joined the group that at one point was a branch of New Action. We ran with a MORE label at one point but once MORE purged ICE, we cut ties.

Gloria and I ran into Bennett, who had also been in MORE (how many Ex_MOREs are there?) at the first RTC meeting of the year in the fall of 2018, surprised to see him there since the last we heard he was still working. We invited him to RA organizer meetings. During the pandemic we began to meet more often on Zoom, especially in organizing for the last RTC election in 2021. Just as the balloting began, word leaked of the Medicare fiasco and RA became super active in organizing opposition, eventually linking up with other municipal workers in CROC and then with Marianne Pizzitola and her group.

Jon Halabi retired a year ago and was an obvious choice to join RA organizers. 

A few people have raised the issue of whether we are elected. We are not. There's an amorphous RA membership list, but membership at this point merely means support. People seem to be OK with the current structure since it seems to work. We attempt to reach consensus on issues. 

Remember, RA Organizers have been connected to most UFT opposition groups, so various points of view are there. Going forward we will see if new voices can be added but we also can't afford to grow so big as to become unwieldy. I'd say our success so far gives us some leeway in continuing along our current path with people trusting us to make the right decisions while we welcome any criticisms.

 

Thanks for all the good wishes after my last post about my health. Right after I posted the surgeon called and said he got all the cancer and right now I'm cancer free but Pancreatic cancer is a beast and there are mini potentials floating around and chemo is needed to try to stamp them out. We spent the past 3 days at our apartment in the city just in case something cropped up and are heading back to Rockaway today to see Bernie the cat who probably forgot we exist. Doc wants me to walk and walk and walk but I tried and don't get very far. Maybe Rockaway air will push me. I'm still agog that a 2.7cm tumor - about an inch - can have such an earthshaking impact on my life.