Geoff Sorkin, Director of the UFT Welfare Fund, a highly paid union staffer making well over $250,000 a year, launched an attack on Daniel Alicea, a middle school special ed teacher during school hours, using the Unity caucus blog as a vehicle.
Of course, Mr. Sorkin doesn’t have to worry about school hours, or classrooms, or kids because he’s not in an actual classroom. He has the luxury of time spent at UFT headquarters where he wrote his shameful, low energy blog from the confines of his luxurious private office next to Wall Street, where there is AC in the summer, heat in the winter, all you can drink coffee and catered breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner.
While Sorkin lives a life of luxury, the hard working, dues paying member he chose to attack, was busy teaching our most marginalized and vulnerable children in a special education class in a Far Rockaway middle school. Daniel Alicea does yeoman-type volunteer union work, after his busy school day and while taking care of his own young children at home. For this he receives no all-expense-paid trips to conventions with open bars and state dinners like Sorkin. No, he just gets his below inflation raises and less than average union welfare benefits that Sorkin and a merry band of nudnicks negotiate for “lowly educators”.
As Sorkin oversees, or mismanages, our bloated welfare fund with nearly a billion dollar surplus, the “lowly members” get bottom shelf glasses with a once every two years certificate worth 150 bucks, dental plans that are only accepted by those fresh of out dental college, or denied prescription coverage despite his and Mulgrew’s outrageous claims that everyone is approved. We rate him **ineffective** on any Danielson rubric.
Perhaps Sorkin’s and Mulgrew’s political machine is shaking because Alicea has a readership of nearly 17,000 on The Wire (the same number as retirees who voted out Unity from leadership of the RTC last June).
Alicea’s newsletter, with its rich, union-first content reaches union members far and wide, including union staffers, while the New York Teacher can be found lining bird cages or in waste paper baskets. While The Wire offers diverse union perspectives written by a variety of NYC educators and advocates and where all members are welcome to read and submit pieces, including Unity apparatchik, Peter Goodman, who has a featured byline there.
Sorkin, along with many other UFT staffers and officer elites are voracious Educators of NYC newsletter readers.
Sorkin is forced to say what boss Mulgrew allows him to and has to justify his position in light of a deluge of damning revelations about his failures managing our benefits.
Sorkin wrote about the Welfare Fund having some unionized support workers but he failed to share that Sorkin himself, and other at-will employees in his department, are not allowed to be unionized and would be fired immediately if they spoke out against their Unity bosses. He’s left to flail and make wild conspiratorial allegations of imaginary attempts to dissolve the UFT welfare fund. He also failed to tell us that one of the alternatives to the disastrous healthcare cost savings deals Mulgrew made, was a consolidation of the city unions’ welfare funds to increase and leverage our buying power that was on the menu of agreed-upon cost saving choices in our 2018 MOA, Appendix B.
Would we be better served with our hard-earned benefits out of his and Mulgrew’s hands? Clearly.
Nonetheless, Sorkin somehow found the time to write a lengthy, bloviating, unsourced attack piece, but can’t be bothered to share any updates with members on the pathetic state of our healthcare coverage, the ever-rising co-pays, the worst mental health coverage in the public sector, a pitiful dental plan, nor our union’s deteriorating relationship with the most important cancer treatment center in the country. He does have time to disparage a teacher of special needs children to detract eyes from his patronage operation’s inability to deliver and the Unity sinking ship.
Perhaps we need new leaders to bring about much needed change who actually know something about the classroom while raising kids and supporting families on underfunded, eroding healthcare.
They aren’t nudnicks. They are cretins who have sold their soles to the devil. Yeah, I know the correct word is souls but they do not have souls or integrity. There is no moral compass floating through Unity. It’s the river of money and power that drives Sorkin, Mulgrew, Barr, Pepper, let’s not forget Weingarten as the mastermind behind it all.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, most chapter leaders, many of which are quite young, get all their information and Unity pep talks from the Unity district reps. Tough battle ahead to oust Mildew but if it were to happen Weingarten would throw him an AFT lifeline
ReplyDeleteThe Unity caucus has failed all the members of the UFT. Active members medical copays have increased. Retirees are in a fight to keep their traditional Medicare. Our dental has been awful for decades. I could go on active members as well as retirees need to vote all f Unity out.
ReplyDelete