Thursday, June 4, 2026
Busy days here at Ed Notes central. I was at the RTC Exec Bd meeting on Tuesday and following the TRS election and also talking to people in the UFT about the Mulgrew assault on competence to insure personal loyalty in the union, along with firings and threats of any hint of independent voices.
I'm back on chemo and had my second treatment yesterday - I'm on an every 2 week schedule. I even took my computer and worked on this item while I was there for a few hours and walking back to my apartment passed a street fair on E. 46 and look what I found:
I came back to Rockaway in the afternoon and want to get this out so I can go outside and do some yard work. The steroids are still working and I'm hoping to have energy to video The Crucible at Rockaway Theatre Company tonight. I saw part of it the other night.
TRS Election
I've seen preliminary results of the TRS election but DOE has to release final totals. I can say Tom Brown won, David Kazansky finished second, showing some organizing muscle. Analyzing the results will be a fun thing to do and I have a lot more to report after talking to many people. The legacy caucuses in the ARISE coalition mostly sat out the election, except for some individuals.
Unity/ARISE Reps Reject electronic voting
As for electronic voting, the bogus committee formed when I, as a member of the election committee in 2025, called for electronic voting, was turned down in exchange for a bogus committee, which I declared bullshit early on, predicting they would find ways to reject electronic voting, which is exactly what happened. The surprise was the two ARISE reps voting with Unity. The ABC reps put out a must read report that tears apart every Unity argument.
...many of the challenges associated with current methods, lost ballots,
outdated addresses, inconsistent administration, chain-of-custody
concerns, are exactly the kinds of problems modern electronic systems
are designed to reduce. Secure platforms can incorporate verification,
encryption, audit logs, and protections against duplicate voting in ways
that strengthen accountability and transparency. But we didn’t
seriously examine whether those tools could improve the process.
Instead, the ARISE/Unity majority recommendation assumes that older
methods are more reliable simply because they are more familiar.
BTW, Unity had 10 members, ARISE 2 and ABC 3. You know, fair.
Unity is now bragging they led the way on electronic voting - by saying no -- and by the way were joined in saying now by reps from the ARISE group - MORE and New Action/RA. These groups had supported our initiatives in 2022 and 2025.
I
pushed hard for an electronic voting option but naturally there are
loads of roadblocks. This time they came up with the constitution
wrinkle - some language in the constitution that says you have to use
written ballots. Christina Gavin pointed out that written can also mean
electronic.
Anyway,
I pointed out the low vote totals for previous elections and handed out
the ugly story on a chart. Like less than 20% of actives voted while
40% of retirees votes. After all the reasons we couldn't do electronic
voting were pointed out I said I had raised this same reso 3 years ago
and they promised to look into the issue but did nothing so we are back
to ground zero.
I
also pointed out that in previous elections the leadership could count
on the retiree vote to carry them through, now with that vote in
potential jeopardy, the leadership should want very much to increase
in-service vote for their own protection. But don't expect any creative
ideas to come from the moribund leadership. They looked like turtles
turned on their backs.
The
best they could come up with was Queens District Rep James Vasquez with
a reso to form a task force to "study" the issue. He also placed blame
on the oppo people over the past 3 years for not bringing up the issue
during that time. Duhhhh, James -- we know you guys never want
electronic voting and you will forget all about your task force.
But Vasquez did not lose the opportunity to put out a dumb blog post attacking the
opposition and blaming them for his own party's failures. That attack
can be termed, "I'm scared shit we will lose and I will have to go back
to the classroom and teach a full load instead of my one or two periods a
day - and lose my second pension."
Sure, Unity led the way on electronic voting -- right over the cliff. Arthur reported on the process as reported on ABC:
They met only three times
and closed the book on facing the issue. They didn’t bother to study the
processes of other unions that used electronic voting successfully, let
alone why so few of us vote. This looks like nothing more than a setup
with a clear, predetermined outcome. Apathy is Unity’s best friend, and
they won’t risk giving the 72% of members who don’t vote a voice.
Instead,
Unity bosses will enable live voting only in Unity strongholds, where
their paid patronage cult members can tacitly remind folks where and how
to vote. Most disappointing is that the two ARISE
members on the committee, MORE’s Olivia Swisher and Retiree Advocate’s
Michael Shulman, voted with Unity. Shulman is also a leader of New
Action, which has been pushing electronic voting for a decade or more.
What happened? You’d have to ask him.
RTC Exec Bd Meeting
Yesterday I attended the RTC Exec Bd meeting. There are 25 people on the RTC EB and that includes the 10 officers. There are no Unity reps because RTC elections are winner take all - 25 EB and 300 delegates. Retiree Advocate, now an official caucus with $50 dues structure and a 15 member steering or organizing committee won that election in an alliance with Marianne Pizzitola. It was a great partnership. Shutting off the former 300 Unity delegates who gave Unity absolute dominance of the DA was a major outcome. Over the past year and a half that alliance has frayed which has made Unity bold with hope they can retake the chapter in next year's election.
RTC replaces delegates as per its constitution
Bennett Fischer, RTC CL:
The results are in from the RTC executive board vote to fill RTC
delegate vacancies. There were 21 people running for 11 spots. The 11
winners are: Renee C. Airhuoyo, Jocelyn Brathwaite, Michael Broucum,
Laura Calamuci, Chris Griffin, Peter Matsoukas,
Sonia Silva, Carolyn Tacey, Linda Weissman, Hazel Fershleiser, and Amy
Arundell. We will submit your names to the union for certification.
And
therein lies a story. RA recruited 300 delegates to run with us two
years ago and we wiped out Unity. I recruited about 30 people to run
with us, including a former colleague who doesn't live in NYC.
Unfortunately he came down with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and died in
March 2025 but we know in October 2024 he wasn't interested in the DA
and I notified people we needed to replace him, along with a few others I
recruited who wanted to drop out and only ran as a favor to me because
they never thought they would win.
Apparently some people at the
UFT were telling Bennett we did not have the right to replace delegates
even though former Unity delegates told us former RTC leader Tom Murphy
just did it when there was a vacancy without even bothering to follow
the RTC constitution which explicitly says the RTC Ex Bd nominates and
votes on replacing elected positions.
Only in the last few
months has the RTC leadership gotten more aggressive on this issue. Not always
transparent (the constitution says any RTC member may attend Ex Bd
meetings but Bennett never announces that or sends out a link other than
those who are aware), this time Bennett made an announcement at the RTC
meeting and there were 21 candidates, including a few from Unity, one
of whom I actually voted for, though I had nominated LeRoy Barr who told
me if I did he'd buy me a drink but he declined the nomination - but
still owes me a drink.
Note that Amy Arundell did squeak into the final position (there was
rank choice voting, indicating a level of hostility to her from the many
ARISE connected RTC EB members. She should have been a slam dunk but the level of mistrust still reigns almost a year after the UFT election. In my opinion, the only way the Mulgrew administration continues to survive is due to this mistrust. Witness the story above about how ARISE voted with Unity. If Mulgrew was smart like Randi (which he isn't) he'd offer to work out a joint slate with ARISE in the next election. After all two of the 3 caucuses had a 12 year arrangement with Randi. (And by the way, Mulgrew broke that arrangement that helped Unity keep control of the high schools within 5 years of taking over --- see my recent blog on the level of incompetency - Mulgrewism is the UFT Version of Trumpism MAGA.
Bennett was not 100% this would be a slam dunk. Imagine if Unity refused to seat our democratically elected delegates, like the Mississippi delegation at the 1968 Democratic convention. I know the RTC leadership doesn't have the guts, but if we can get at least 50-100 people there to demand our delegates get seated and then walk out en masse if they don't. Good luck with that. And I say that in reference to the following item.
Arthur had a reso calling for us not to have to pay $180 a month for a prescription drug plan that included a petition some of us have been circulating that already has 6k signatures.
The RTC Exec Bd supported the reso but there was push back on the petition, which has ties to ABC and you could sense the hostility from some of the leading lights with questions like "who is this going to?" and concerns over how the petition would be used.
I'll let Arthur tell you about it.
RTC Chapter Leader Bennett Fischer moved my
resolution, demanding the UFT pay for our prescription premiums, up to
number one on our agenda. I was pretty happy about that, and I’ve posted
it below. It’s a mixed victory though, as the RA folks all voted to
drop the second resolved, decoupling it from our online petition that’s
already garnered over six thousand signatures.
This is a botched opportunity to build on a solid foundation and reach further.
Retiree
Advocate is repeating an error they made early on. When we were first
elected, they willingly surrendered the official UFT Retiree page, which
had 6,000 followers, to a Unity Patronage Cult Member. After two years,
they haven’t managed to recruit half that number. In failing to link to our petition, they toss away 6,000 signatures we’ve collected.
ABC is all about organizing. In September, we will take that petition into school buildings and build on it. No one in service wants to pay these exorbitant premiums. Members will read it and say oh HELL no.
It
will be good to pass the resolution, but the RTC action that comes
along with it, I’m afraid, could be as lackluster as that for 1096.
There
were several rationales offered. Bennett said when he first saw it he
thought it may have been created by teenagers who wanted to make
trouble. It wasn’t my turn to speak. I really wanted to say I’m not a
teenager, but yes I want to make trouble. Making trouble, you know, is how you get stuff done.
If you don’t believe me, ask Marianne Pizzitola, without whom we’d all have an inferior Medicare “Advantage” plan right now.
Several
people asked who wrote the petition. I kept raising my hand to show I
did, and it took a while before people understood.
Another
objection was you can’t put a “hot link” on a resolution. Several
people seemed to agree, but I was not among them. Better to start with
6,000 than zero. What could they be thinking?
RTC has not been great with petitions.
When I tried to have them start a petition in support of 1096, the RTC
Executive Board voted to “table” the suggestion. That’s a polite way of
saying we are doing nothing, and indeed, aside from one strongly worded letter, mostly written by me, we have done nothing.
The comment about not putting links in a reso drove me wild because the link is an organizing tool and their mentality seems to be to lobby at the top - send strongly worded letters to Mulgrew - and not organize at the bottom. A reso that goes nowhere seems to satisfy them while many of us think a reso without an action component is a form of pounding your chest.
End Winner Take All - Install a Proportional repBack in the 70s when we raised proportional representation as an alt to winner take all, Unity hacks (and Shanker) would say that's how Hitler came to power. Allowing space for a variety of viewpoints and giving people a voice leads directly to Hitler. Sure. Proportional representation is a version of the parliamentary system. If there are a 100 positions you portion them out to each group running based on their percentage. It's not all that simple but worth exploring. We all say when we run for UFT elections that if we were in power we would democratize the union but as we've seen with RTC, once you smell the roses of power, changing things to share with a group like Unity takes some of that nice smell away.
As oppo people we always opposed the winner take all approach and when we were winning 30% of the vote we felt we should one third of the delegates, the officers and the exec bd. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, we are in the drivers seat and it makes meetings like we just had easier without Unity attempts to undermine any initiative that counters the Mulgrew line. Unity people are free to attend the monthly RTC meetings and they have boldly tried to undermine any hint of variance from Unity orthodoxy. To distract the chapter from issues like protecting our healthcare or eliminating co-pays or relieving us of the over-expensive prescription drug plan they bring up resos on fair housing or protecting social security -- duhhhhh! Like just passing their reso will accomplish something.
Bennett has been fairly tolerant to Unity, even bending over backward to be fair and not act like Tom Murphy did. That extends to criticizing those of us who go on the attack against Unity playing games (Kumbaya - we are all union members). After all, the Unity goal is to get us out of office and go back to their own dictatorial running of the chapter. The Unity crew had asked to have their fair housing reso put on the main agenda so they wouldn't have to try for the new motion period -- oh how beautiful to see them whining while Mulgrew does the same thing to the oppo by filling the new motion period with mom and apple pie resos from the leadership. RTC EB discussed it, with Bennett and a few other voting to put their reso on the agenda but there were objections from people who wanted to amend their motion, with the result that they decided to write their own version and we did and voted to put that one on the main agenda.
This seemed to outrage the Unity crowd. Like how dare we act like Mulgrew? To add insult, I spoke at the May RTC meeting and added a little wrinkle that I knew would enrage them further. To make housing more affordable, my amendment called for abolishing co-pays. Now you'd think I'd tossed a stink bomb. They demanded to have a speaker opposed after the question was called and Bennett didn't recognize them - which I felt was a mistake - let Unity make the case for co-pays (I say this as I am getting chemo and will be billed for a co-pay.)
Our platform called for some system of proportional rep - ending winner take all - and we have a constitution we can amend - and I'm sure the UFT leadership would put obstacles in the way since they expect to take back the chapter in next year's election. I should point out that in the 2021 election we asked the Unity people to give us 5 out of the 300 delegates so our 30% voters get some representation. They said NO. But I'm more generous. At the vote count in June 2024 when I watched the Unity people look crushed, I told one of their leaders if they had prop rep their 37% they would have gotten over 100 delegates. He gave me a sour look.
Since we won I have pushed our new RTC leadership - of which I am one (sort of) - to change the constitution to allow for prop rep but it didn't seem to be a priority - some seem to think they will win again next year. I think we are in a 50/50 split with Unity at this point - as long as we have Marianne with us, and given the RA crowd hostility to her, that is not a sure bet.
Bennett did mention taking a look at this as a project for next year. With it being an election year and so much going on, it is unlikely that the process would be complete by the time the election takes place, especially since Unity would try to stop it - unless all retirees get together and remake the alliance with Marianne Pizzitola, at which point Unity might see they might lose and take a half loaf.
A bill moving rapidly through the New York Legislature—Senate Bill
S.9577-A, sponsored by Senator Jessica Ramos, and Assembly Bill
A.10835-A, sponsored by Assemblymember Judy Griffin—is being promoted as
a measure to stop fraudulent communications that falsely claim to
represent labor unions and their representatives.
As detailed in The Wire’s investigation, the concern is not hypothetical.
In
recent years, disputes have emerged involving UFTMembers.org, an
independent publication critical of UFT union leadership. Other
controversies have involved parody, satire, and internal political
disputes within labor organizations. Reform caucuses and member advocacy
groups routinely use union names to identify the members they
represent. Independent newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and election
campaigns frequently discuss union leadership, governance, elections,
and policy decisions.
Those activities are not fraud.
They are part of union democracy.
Yet the legislation currently
contains no explicit protections making clear that criticism, reform
advocacy, parody, election-related communications, and internal
organizing remain protected.
Read URGENT CALL and sign petition to amend the law.
👉 unionvoices.educators.nyc
👉 thewire.educators.nyc/p/new-yorks-union-communications-bill
Stop Fraud. Not Dissent.
This bill smells to me - Unity etc and other union leadership are trying to brand internal critics as outside agitators, the classic manner of dictatorships. Remember how civil rights workers were branded as outside agitators. Our crew behind this amendment has had great outreach to explain it all.
Here is a link to Arthur's report of the RTC Ex Bd meeting and his petition.
UFT Welfare Fund Should Pay for Retiree Prescription Premiums
Whereas, UFT retirees are on fixed incomes, and,
Whereas, $180 per month is a high premium, and,
Whereas, many UFT retirees pay for other family members as well, and
Whereas, this rate went up a whopping 50% over a two-year period, and,
Whereas, this is a hardship on many UFT retirees, and
Whereas, other union Welfare Funds, including those of FDNY, NYPD and DC37 cover prescription premium costs for members, and
Whereas, UFT officers frequently mention “premium-free health insurance,” and,
Whereas, UFT officers speak of our Welfare Fund as the best in the country, be it therefore,
Resolved, that our Welfare Fund must cover retirees just as other Welfare Funds do, and be it further,
Resolved,
that we actively support and encourage signing of the petition at
https://stopchargingretirees.org/ demanding UFT Welfare Fund cover the
costs of pharmacy insurance premiums for retired members.
At
the suggestion of RTC Exec. Board member Alan Stein, who pointed out
members get $900 back, I proposed the following addition:
Whereas this costs members a net $2160 a year, or members with spouses 4320 a year,
Only Marianne Pizzitola could accomplish such a feat of unity. I find it more than ironic that certain forces inside the current leadership of the Retired Teachers Chapter of the UFT have been critical of her efforts to unite all sides of the political world in the the support of the healthcare of retired NYC workers because they would rather people whose politics they abhor not to support us and castigate Marianne for getting them to work in our interests. The level of support for working with Marianne is one sticking point in the disagreement between the 30 year old Retiree Advocate, which won the 2024 election with Marianne's massive support, and the new kids on the block, Fix Retiree Benefits (FRB), which has been working with her organization to battle on issues like co-pay and para pensions.
