The history of the UFT is that of one-party rule....a group of opposition caucuses within the UFT announced that they had banded together in a long-shot bid to seize control of the union’s leadership.The rebels have had some initial success......“We had a victory tonight,” said Daniel Alicea, the UFC delegate who introduced the amendment at the Nov. 17 meeting. “We saw an amendment that shows that they’re willing to have a full-court press for class size.” .... Alicea believes that one reason the leadership hasn’t lowered the class size caps under de Blasio is they believe asking smaller class sizes can only come as a trade off in salary negotiations. With billions of federal education dollars coming to the city through COVID-19 relief funding, Alicea argues that the time is now to fight over reducing the contractual caps and more.“We're looking for not just contractual caps, but also the contractual loopholes and exceptions and a grievance process that is further expedited,” said Alicea..... City and State
Reporter Max Parrott covered the November 17 Delegate Assembly events outside 52 Broadway for hours and wrote this in depth analysis. I did my own DA analysis, which ruffled more than a few feathers in the UFT hierarchy, leading to personal (and untrue) attacks on me (see comments below my post):
It's hard to find reporters who actually report things the way they actually happened, so kudos to Max. Also kudos to him for this shout out:
“One of the key factors in UFT elections has been the retiree vote, which generally has gone very high for Unity,” said Scott, who for decades has chronicled union politics on his blog, Ed Notes.
Word is that the leadership is in DEFCON mode over recent events and has issued orders to be aggressive against oppositionists to its army of hacks and slugs to go on the attack.
UFT District 25 Rep Lamar Hughes: You don’t hear anyone coming up with nicknames for Norm after he crossed the picket line in 1968. Oh, y’all didn’t know??? Norm Scott crossed the picket line in 1968.Sorry Lamar, y'all just make shit up. But I'll school Lamar on the '68 strike another time.
The UFT leadership sellout on Medicare and support for privatized healthcare is a big issue.
UFC is hoping to make in-roads with this demographic by protesting the union’s support for shifting health benefits for about 250,000 retired city workers to a new plan under Medicare Advantage... “Everybody, including me, thinks that class size is the overriding, bigger issue, but as far as getting votes, the thing is this has a lot of retirees pissed off,” said UFC member Bennett Fischer.
If a significant group of retirees vote UFC, like, say over 35%
(there are thousands of Unity retirees so winning that vote is very
unlikely), the final numbers could be closer than comfortable for Unity. Thus we actually see Unity hacks attacking us as anti-union for calling for medicare for all plans, a bizarro argument, but expect a lot more to come. There are whispers that some in Unity Caucus want Mulgrew to not run for President but are too weak - and scared - to act on it.
We'll have some more fun with the Unity gang in upcoming posts. Here is Parrott's article:
Tension builds within the UFT over reducing class sizes
A new coalition within the union dubbed United for Change won a vote to force a referendum on the issue, signaling a growing divide.
