Mulgrew's Para Pay Gambit in Conflict with Mamdani Who Gets Praise from the Right: Is This War?

EONYC, The WIRE:

don’t confuse a temporary check with a raise.

don’t confuse a political campaign with collective bargaining.

 Arthur Goldstein, The Ever-Shifting Rationales of Michael Mulgrew

You CAN’T circumvent collective bargaining.

That’s what he [Mulgrew] told us as we tried to pass 1096. No doubt he’ll trot this out again as we support the newly named 1008. The problem, he claims, with a bill that would make our health care city policy and eliminate his beloved co-pays is it violates collective bargaining.  

Paras Need a Living Wage Now, Not To Be Used as Political Props - Educators of NYC, Daniel Alicea

Monday, Sept. 7, 2026 - Happy Labor Day

 

There were howls of laughter in UFT-land when the unpopular union leader Michael Mulgrew declared war on the super popular Mayor Mamdani over the para bonus issue. 

 

Did Mamdani invite Mulgrew to break the much-maligned pattern bargaining that sets a standard of pay raise for all unions based on the first union to settle? It would make sense for a DSA pro-labor mayor to give special attention to the lowest paid workers and paras certainly fit that mold, as do EMS workers. But that would break the pattern and might lead to squawking from higher salaried who might get less %wise even if the actual money they get would be more - much more.  

 

Due to pattern-bargaining, the same % goes to the highest and lowest paid. Thus a 100k at 3% worker gets a 3k raise a year and a para at 35K gets a $350 raise in the same contract. The only way for paras to get a permanent, pensionable salary is to selectively break the pattern.  

 

Yes, Mulgrew is using the same collective bargaining argument as Mamdani when it comes to protecting retiree healthcare, except Mamdani is closer to the truth than Mulgrew. But using "truth" and "Mulgrew" in the same sentence is a sham.

 

Oh, the irony of the mainstream NYC press (Times, News, Post) engaging in a rare Mamdani praise-fest for standing up to the UFT, when in actuality he is taking a potential long-range pro-para pro-union position. But then again so much of what Mulgrew has done is actually anti-union, and the para bonus gambit may just fit that mold. 

 

I say potential because the crucial test will be in the next contract negotiations where if Mamdani doesn't deliver for paras his cred on the left on the affordability issue with some of the lowest paid city workers would be laid to waste. 

 

There are many facets to the para pay issue. When my wife, who pays little attention to some of this stuff, asked me why Mamdani opposes the para bonus, I realized the issue had gone mainstream. I told her the key to understanding the entire issue was the Fix Para Pay election win over Unity in the 2024 chapter election. Her eyes glazed over at the inside baseball. Go and explain this to the mainstream press which is framing the issue in lopsided ways.

 

Daniel Alicea addresses the Unity election loss issue:

The Daily News says UFT President Michael Mulgrew “failed” paraprofessionals at the bargaining table and “basically left the paras behind.”

That’s the sentence worth remembering.

Because before there was a RESPECT Check, before Mayor Zohran Mamdani sued to stop it, and before politicians started holding press conferences about paraprofessional poverty, paras themselves had already revolted.

In the last UFT paraprofessional chapter election, in 2024, Fix Para Pay — a rank-and-file movement demanding better wages — defeated Mulgrew’s Unity Caucus with roughly 75% of the vote.

That’s not a close election.

That’s a jaw-breaking message.

Only after that political earthquake inside his own union did Mulgrew become the public face of a $10,000 legislative campaign. A lobbying campaign and series of bills in which Mulgrew never once consulted with the UFT paraprofessional chapter over its design or messaging.

That history matters.

So does what happened to the $10,000.

Continue reading his post at The Wire

The mainstream mostly anti-Mamdani and anti-union press has been having a field day, gleeful at seeing a split and mocking a DSA member mayor, and so happy that a pro-labor socialist will stand up to the union.  

 

Here are a few points to explore:

 

Mulgrew's para gambit was a response to the Para chapter election loss in 2024. Check.

 
If we delve deeper, we can see that Mamdani is actually more pro-labor than Mulgrew and his corrupt UFT leadership by defending the collective bargaining agreement as the way to enact permanent economic health for paras as opposed to a one-time non-pensionable gimmick. 

 

Mulgrew and City Council chair Menin tag team Mamdani as she preps a 2029 campaign against him, a campaign the UFT will back (maybe the kiss of death for her?). The para issue is the first of others to come where Menin looks for opportunities to differentiate herself. (Keep an eye on the 9/11 ceremonies).

 

The mainstream press has superficially been siding with Mamdani for standing up to the union and attacking Menin, but that is temporary. The second he gives paras a raise in the contract, the dogs will be out. 

 

The left, especially the loyal opposition in the UFT, which is reluctant to criticize Mamdani and seems confused, just stays silent - see if you can find a Jacobin article delving into the issue. So the only place with a left-leaning perspective where you will get some analysis is by reading Arthur, Daniel, ABC, Fix Retiree Benefits, FIx Para Pay and Ed Notes. Let me know when you see MORE, RA or NAC put something up.

 

Here are excerpts from the NYT authored by 3 reporters who always have their chops out to slam Mamdani. The Times has followed the scurvy NY Post lead on anti-Mamdani articles.                                                                  

By Fighting Union Pay Bonus, Mamdani Wins Rare Praise From Conservatives

A lawsuit filed by the Mamdani administration to block $10,000 bonuses for teachers’ aides has put the mayor at odds with their union.

Aug. 31, 2026 - By Eliza Shapiro, Sally Goldenberg and Dana Rubinstein

When Mayor Zohran Mamdani sued the City Council over its end-run move to give $10,000 bonuses to teachers’ aides outside the normal collective bargaining process, the mayor placed himself at the short end of a two-on-one battle.

Not only would the mayor square off against the City Council, a frequent sparring partner, but he would also embark on his first major fight with a public sector union, in this case the United Federation of Teachers.

In doing so, a mayor eager to burnish his pro-worker bona fides has scrambled conventional wisdom and left himself in the strange position of being praised by some of his most committed critics.

“Mamdani does right,” read a recent headline from The New York Post’s conservative editorial

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/nyregion/mamdani-uft-paraprofessionals-budget.html 

 

 A Daily News editorial goes after Menin:

Julie Menin’s power grab in pushing bonuses for NYC paraprofessionals would make Trump proud

Because Speaker Julie Menin knows better, her unabashed abuse of power in orchestrating a unanimous City Council vote for a $10,000 bonus payment for NYC’s deeply deserving school paraprofessionals would make Donald Trump proud.

Her usurping the mayor’s exclusive authority under the state Taylor Law to negotiate contracts was a naked giveaway to the powerful teachers union and United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew and sets a dangerous precedent at City Hall.

 

The Missing Link in all reporting on the para issue is the 10k is the Unity Loss to Fix Para Pay in the 2024 Para Chapter Election, along with the loss in the Retiree election. 

 

The losses were by big margins: 63% in the RTC and 75% in the para election. In the RTC, Unity dropped from their usual 17-19K to 10K.

With 26k paras and 70K retirees and his re-election coming up a year later, losing big in those chapters could very well have turned into a loss for Unity - and both results spurred Amy Arundell and other unhappy Unity people to join with some standard opposition folk to form a potent ABC and become a threat. Mulgrew pivoted by declaring he no longer backed MedAdvantage and for the paras came up with the one-time non-pensionable 10k bonus. 

And it seemed to work in time for the 2025 election . One of the reasons ABC actually thought it had a chance to win even in a 3 slate race was the hope that the para and retiree vote would be substantial. While the retiree vote dropped from 2024 it was still enough to continue to worry Unity with Unity regaining some ground but fundamentally in a 50-50 split with the ABC/ARISE combo retiree vote. (I will delve deeply into the upcoming RTC election.)

The para vote was not substantial, as the Unity blitz before the election gave paras the impression Mulgrew was really fighting for them. It will be interesting to see how things play out in the upcoming para chapter election if FPP runs a slate. Will there be some blowback if they still haven't gotten the check by the spring?

While supporting the 10k as an emergency bonus, ABC pointed out the one-time only gimmicky aspect and called for paras to get a permanent pensionable raise in contract negotiations, while also pointing out that Mulgrew had his chance to get them a big raise in the last contract and didn't even try. For taking that position, Unity attacked ABC as being against the 10K and that also cut down the vote. But 140 paras ran with ABC -- and none with ARISE. 

Now that Mamdani is taking the collective bargaining position in opposing the 10k bonus and in essence challenging Mulgrew to bargain effectively (two contradictory words for UFT negotiators) he also puts to shame the Mulgrew position that supporting City Council bills to protect retiree healthcare violates collective bargaining and the Taylor Law. Taking one side for an issue and taking the contradictory side for another issue is not out of bounds in the UFT.

Tell Our Councilmembers to Support 1008

Please do your part to help get 1008 passed!

Fix Retiree Benefits - UFT

I left a text linking the para election issue at the Brian Lehrer show regarding the election after a segment on the para issue last week. 

Daniel points out that if going around contract negotiations and using politics to bargain is good for the goose, it is also good for the gander as other unions will play the same game.

Daniel Alicea nailed the FPP election impact:

The ripple effects are already beginning.

Council Member Joann Ariola has announced legislation proposing $20,000 workforce stabilization payments for FDNY EMTs and $25,000 payments for FDNY paramedics, arguing they face the same recruitment and retention crisis.

She probably won’t be the last.

School aides.

School crossing guards.

School food service workers.

Childcare workers.

EMTs.

And countless other lower-paid municipal employees now have every reason to ask the same question.

Paras Need a Living Wage Now, Not To Be Used as Political Props

While UFT leadership, City Council Speaker Menin and Mayor Mamdani are cast as heroes and villains, we continue to forget paraprofessionals need a permanent living wage, now — not later.

Dan Alicea

Aug 30, 2026

 

https://thewire.educators.nyc/p/paras-need-a-living-wage-now-not?r=h8n1q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

 

Last week, the Daily News editorial board got one big thing right about New York City’s paraprofessionals.

NYC paras were left behind.

Where I part company with the board is over what happens next — and who gets to play hero now that everybody has discovered that a school worker making barely $33,000 can’t afford New York City.

More from Dan 

The Good, Bad and Ugly - The NYC Para Bill

Educators of NYC

·

Jul 21

Read full story

FIX RETIREE BENEFITS - UF

 

Does the UFT Wish Tenure Would Go Away While Hoping the Taylor Law Stays for a Lifetime?

New York’s Taylor Law banning and penalizing public worker strikes violates fundamental workers’ rights protected by international law. -- ILO

If you start digging into the UFT response, or lack thereof, on the tenure issue, they want tenure to go away so they don't have to answer for it...

Would UFT leaders be happy if we had the right to strike like teachers in Chicago despite the limitations? What do you think? Let me try to connect a few dots.

There is an interesting article on tenure and the politics behind granting, not granting, extending, etc. at Gotham Schools:

Amid tenure crackdown, some targeted teachers get good news

Making tenure go away

It is worth reading along with some of the comments. Watching the behavior of the UFT/AFT leadership based on lots of anecdotal evidence and some observations I added the comment below which I expanded into a general analysis of the motivations behind the actions of UFT/AFT/NYSUT complex. Before going to the analysis there are a few points to make about the tenure issue.

First, meet any untenured teacher and the concept of getting tenure is absolutely on their minds -- except if you run across a TFA or E4E slug on the way out of teaching. I met quite a few at the Gotham party yesterday and that fact was reaffirmed.

Secondly, I want to tell a brief story about a UFT DA I attended last spring where Mulgrew was asked what to do if a teacher keeps getting tenure extended year after year -- like a 3rd time. His response: let us know. Too bad the person asking the question didn't follow up with "But if we let you know what will you do about it." Oh, I know the answer: We'll look into it. OK, after you look into it what will you do?

In fact, I believe the UFT wants tenure to go away as an issue and would breathe a sigh of relief if the politicians took it away while they put up a feeble fight (see New Jersey, Cleveland, and the rest of the AFT sell-out tour).

In fact the more you dig the more you find all sorts of revised unwritten tenure issues that have come up that the UFT is ignoring. Like teachers who transfer to a new school in their 3rd year are told that they can't get tenure because they have to work under the principal for 2 years. Or teachers who switch from middle school to high school have to go through some sort of retenuring process. And of course the big enchilada, principals who want to show their bosses how tough  they are --- like how does it look if 100% of your teachers get tenure even if they are all John Dewey? And finally, the denial of tenure to teachers at schools branded as failures, the main point of the Gotham article. In other words, the entire process of not granting tenure for political and not educational reasons.

Send me any info you find on any UFT response or comments on these issues. Is this the fear of Campbell Brown-like attacks operating?

You know this is reminding me of what was done in NYC during the 1930's depression when they had 2 classes of teachers, regulars and permanent subs who made less money and had less rights -- they found all sorts of ways to keep people in the permanent sub category. And I believe the denial of tenure, possibly year after year is returning us to those years.

Taylor Law outlawing strikes takes union leaders off the hook

This is from an interesting article in the Labor Press about an International Labor Organization ruling:

A November 2011 International Labor Organization decision ruled, after the Transport Workers Union Local 100 filed a complaint with the ILO in November 2009 after the union struck in December 2005 and was heavily fined, that New York’s Taylor Law banning and penalizing public worker strikes violates fundamental workers’ rights protected by international law. With 200,000 city public workers without contracts, in some cases over five years, the ILO decision would seem to have presented the city’s public sector unions the economic leverage they have desperately needed to win new contracts. ...... However, since the November 2011 ILO decision regarding the TWU’s complaints ... there hasn’t been a unified response from the city’s public unions, although 200,000 members are working without contracts.

What does that tell you about our labor leaders?

Here was my comment at Gotham:

I believe if you start digging into the UFT response, or lack thereof, on the tenure issue, they want tenure to go away so they don't have to answer for it ala Campbell Brown attacks, etc. But if they are too open about it they face some wrath from the members. So in the ideal world of the UFT, the politicians take it away and they say, "See, it wasn't out fault we just have to give more money to COPE to elect OUR politicians," which of course they know they never will but it takes them off the hook. This is part of the consistency of the UFT/AFT/NYSUT policy -- try to appear as one thing to the members but as another to the rest of the world.

Thus the policy of pushing collaboration because the alternative would be to engage in a war which given the way they operate internally (lack of democracy, total top-down, lack of engagement of the members) they cannot win. (Vs Chicago TU which has mobilized its membership to engage in the war). Why won't they do what Chicago TU has done? You can only mobilize people effectively if they feel they have a say in union policy and the ability to influence it. Giving people such a say is a bigger threat to the union/Unity Caucus leadership than the ed deformers. Thus the support for charter schools and even co-locations in the hope that they can organize teachers in charters even if a small percentage. (See: Exposing UFT/Charter Connections as UFT Supports Co-location)

They know that in the long run the teachers unions without a fight will suffer slow strangulation but given that within the straight jacket of their political framework they are helpless to stop it, at least the people at the top can exist for quite a while and if they make the proper deals with ed deformers (Gates, Broad, etc) they might be able to keep the shell of a union going with them at the top. Ed deformers are not unified. The right wing Republicans want to kill the unions and the leadership completely while the Dem/liberal deformers (Obama, Bloomberg, Gates) see the usefulness to them of keeping the shell and as long as the union gives them pieces of what they want and keeps giving they will support the existence of the current leadership. That is why Chicago is such a massive threat to the entire arrangement between the unions and the Dem deformers.

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