Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!
This is basic premise of this post and was stimulated by attending the SAG/AFTRA/AWG picket line with thousands from a variety of unions that make the UFT/Unity leadership look like ghosts.
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
In the midst of thousands from active unions, seeing the sparse turnout from the UFT - they looked mostly like staffers - got me to thinking, a very dangerous thing.
The sense of militancy on that picket line was inspiring.
I started thinking of the strike fever around the nation and the contracts being won and realize there's no way our UFT leadership wanted our rank and file to witness this strike militancy.
I heard a UAW worker on a podcast recently talking about how demoralized workers were under the old leadership which bargained away their rights -- asking them to vote for bad contracts and how the new leadership has invigorated the rank and file.
The same thing in the Teamsters which voted in a new and aggressive leadership.The membership had voted down a recent contract but the leadership over ruled them. Sound familiar? Think of the overturning of the OT/PT NO vote. I wrote:
New Leaders: Several prominent unions, representing groups from automobile workers to actors, are now in the hands of outspoken leaders who have taken their membership to the brink of high-stakes labor stoppages — or beyond.
The UFT outspoken leader focuses on attacking our health plan, critical voices in the union, and to sell an inferior contract.
Then I read articles about how in a little over a decade the newly elected leadership in the Chicago Teachers Union has turned what was a moribund union into the most progressive and dynamic political force in Chicago. The same with the UTLA. And then fought down nausea thinking of the 60+ year reign of our own Unity Caucus in the UFT. You know what Unity shills say to this? We still have it better. It we do it is because of the militant strikes and contracts won over 50 years ago.
...an insurgent socialist-led caucus, the Caucus of Rank and
File Educators, had taken over the union in 2010. By 2012, the teachers’ union — then under the leadership of the late visionary Karen Lewis — had launched a strike in response to the state legislature passing a bill that curtailed teachers’ bargaining power and right to strike.
I followed the Chicago story since I connected with the late George Schmidt in 1999 and that union was dead in the water in 2009. Look at how things changed with the new leadership elected in 2010? In over a decade they've made up a hell of a lot of ground, and in times when teacher unions have come under massive attack.
So I make the case that only new, progressive leadership will change the UFT from a passive to an aggressive union.
The big issue is whether such a nascent potential leadership currently exists like it did in LA and Chicago? So far I haven't seen anything comparable to CORE or the coalition in UTLA here in NYC with similar outreach. After all, this is a much bigger enchilada with 1800 schools. (George Schmidt used to tell me Chicago is roughly equivalent to Brooklyn -- in the 2010 election there were about 675 schools). Also neither city had a Unity-like machine or anything like a lock on the union that Unity has had. (In the 2010 Chicago election, there were 5 caucuses running and a runoff). Unity has set up an undemocratic fire wall that other unions don't have.
There will be no change in UFT leadership until there is a powerful counter-force to the Unity machine with deep outreach into the schools, especially elementary and middle schools.
So far building such a force is a work in progress and progress has been very sketchy with too many caucuses doing their own organizing. The founding of the coalition, United for Change for last year's UFT election was a step forward. I don't believe any one caucus can win power in the UFT. So the UFC coalition is the only way forward and Unity will do anything to disrupt its progress, including divide and conquer.
Unity may be passive when it comes to dealing with the DOE and principals but when it comes to threats to its power from opposing forces, Unity becomes a tiger.
So what's the verdict? Is the UFT leadership saddled with a membership -- New York's meekest as my late friend used to lament?
Or is the rank and file saddled with a leadership that only shows militancy when its own members who challenge it?
The views expressed by our individual authors are their own and may not reflect the views of the EONYC community. Just as we may not all agree with the editorial views expressed as the collective Educators of NYC community.
UFT
Executive Board high school members will share a rank and file vision
for a better UFT contract. Learn more about the new proposed tentative
agreement -- its perks and its drawbacks.
At
this important meeting, you’ll learn more about the newly proposed
tentative contract. Our panel will also share a rank and file vision and
in-classroom perspectives from union members, like you, fighting for a
better contract.
There
is a lot to talk about. In 2018, major healthcare givebacks were not
fully disclosed. Simply put, we can’t afford to be fooled again. It’s
why we all need to really look at what is at stake.
We’ll
discuss the perks found this 2023 tentative agreement but also the
major drawbacks, such as — the lasting impact of sub-inflation raises,
implicit major healthcare givebacks, low wages for paraprofessionals and
occupational & physical therapists, more micromanagement, no clear
plan for virtual schools & much, much more.
So, what happens if we vote this TA down for a better contract? Join us to find out.
If Mulgrew is serious about class size implementation and
enforcement, he’d support a class size guarantee in our next contract.
The United For Change coalition is calling for one as part of their BIG 5
contract demands. -- Educators of NYC
Sunday, May 21, 2023
United for Change (UFC) is pointing to 5 big must haves in the upcoming contract: Fair pay, Healthcare, Class size, Working conditions, and a host of other issues.
The UFT leadership is anxious to wrap up the contract by hook or crook before the end of the school year - so they can focus on screwing retirees on healthcare when their move to Aetna takes effect on Sept. 1.
But rest assured, changes are coming to working teachers on healthcare AFTER they vote on the contract. Unity is selling the idea we can't negotiate on healthcare but Mulgrew can through the MLC. The UFT constitution calls for a vote on all contracts but Unity has been violating this constantly.
There is another big rally on healthcare at city hall this Wednesday at noon. I will be there.
That is why we need to keep circulating our petition calling for a vote on healthcare.
I will have a follow-up piece on the gaslighting from the faux 500 Unity Caucus dominated negotiating committees (bet on their voting to ratify even if there's dog shit on the contract) and the upcoming "let's call an emergency DA, give people 10 minutes to read the contract and vote, then a big push to threaten the rank and file with dire consequences if they vote no" campaign.
We have already seen Unity attacks and scare tactics about a NO vote. Remember the NO vote in the 1995 contract which originally raised max years from 20 to 25 years, the main reason people voted it down? Sandra Feldman said we must be smoking something if we think we will get something better. Yet we did -- knocked down the max to 22 years, still a loss and a giveback but not as much. Even in the 1975 strike which Shanker lost for us, he still claimed that by striking instead of losing 15k jobs we only lost 13k. Wowser! The OT/PT unit turned down the last UFT contract and won some improvement in the follow-up. So there is a history of winning a better deal by turning down the first one.
In 2005 ICE and TJC (New Action was then aligned with Unity) led a NO vote and almost pulled it off with 40%. That contract still haunts us today as it killed a lot of seniority protections and opened the doors for Bloomberg to closed schools and created the ATR situation with no guaranteed regular jobs. The rank and file were aware and rose up to a great extent but just not enough. If they could have re-voted two years late that contract would have lost.
Now for the last 50-something years until I retired and could not vote, I always voted NO because there was no improvement in class size. The union would not even negotiate it. But the UFT claimed the big lobbying "victory" on a recent law on class size and I was yelling at my colleagues on the negotiating committee to demand class size be included because the contract protects us against fudging with the law and even reversals when there is a budget crunch.
So lo and behold I wasn't surprised to see this from our esteemed mis-leader:
"Meeting
the new class size standards is going to require a real plan -- and so
far, the DOE hasn't managed to create one. This document is missing a
strategy for
implementation and a targeted proposal for where and when new seats
should be built. The state passed the small class size law and increased
funding to New York City public schools to pay for it. We will work
with the state to make sure the New York City Department
of Education fulfills its obligations and complies with this law" -
Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers
Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters eviscerated the Adams/Banks administration, which opposed the class size law and is working actively to gut it.
On Friday, DOE posted what is purported to be their draft five- year
class size reduction plan, in accordance with the new state law. As I
was quoted in the Daily News, “It’s a big nothing burger. There is no plan. They’re hoping
just to coast on enrollment decline until it’s too late to do anything
real.”
There is nothing in the plan about providing more space
or staffing to lower class size, or capping enrollment at very
overcrowded schools. There is nothing about creating space by using
more creative strategies, e.g. by possibly moving more PreK seats out of
elementary schools to CBOs which have thousands of empty seats. There
is nothing at all about how the benchmarks will be achieved in the out
years, especially given how DOE intends to continue cutting school
budgets and has proposed to slash the capital plan by $2.3 billion and
22,000 seats. In fact, there is not a single mention in the proposed
Feb. amendment to the capital plan, released six months after the
Governor signed the class size bill into law, that even mentions the
mandate to lower class size.
I will keep saying this - Class size has not been lowered in the contract for over 50 years -- codify the state law.
Now the UFT is calling for rallies this week on Thursday and UFC is supporting these rallies even though some of us see them as staged to give the impression that they can influence the contract -- like Adams will be influenced. OK. I'll go along. Some cynics think there is already an agreement and the UFT is staging events and holding off to squeeze the issue into the final two weeks of June to try to circumvent a No vote campaign. I'm shocked, just shocked -- (Yes I watched Casablanca again last night for the 100th time.).
The United for Change coalition (New Action, Retiree Advocate, MORE, Solidarity, ICE, EONYC) began meeting again with the pressure of the new contract and has produced a fabulous leaflet which we handed out at the DA last Wednesday.
While the UFT leaders "sell" the 3% pattern --- I even heard at a recent ex bd meeting the chief negotiator say we need to keep fighting for that pattern since we haven't attained it yet. As a social security recipient I'm getting 8%. It pays to be old. Did you notice the wins of other teacher unions? How about Oakland? Sam Seder interviewsVilma Serrano of the Oakland Education Association (OEA). The contract includes a historic raise for all full-time teachers and stipends for specialty educators and staff.
Daniel Alicea of Educators of NYC has been the architect of the campaign, showing his many talents.
And HS Ex Bd member Nick Bacon has been on the case. Let me point out that two years ago Nick was in Unity and Daniel was looking to work with Unity (both voted for Unity in 2019). These are not the usual oppo suspects (like me). It says something about the waning of internal power and influence of Unity. Daniel and Nick make a dynamic duo.
UFT: Let’s Fight for the Contract We Deserve
With the first tentative agreement likely to be presented within the next few weeks, every last action matters. Reposted from the New Action blog at https://newaction.org
On Wednesday, May 24th, our union will hold what islikely to bethe UFT’s final organizing action for the 2023 contract. Members will assemble at five sites (one in each borough) to rally for a fair agreement. I am hopeful that attendance will be good – not just by staffers, but by regular rank-and-file teachers, paras, and related professionals. And yes, I plan to attend, and have encouraged members of my chapter to attend. I encourage you to attend too.
Sure, I have some reservations about whether the specifics of this event are good enough to get us the contract we deserve. I think it’s a mistake that our union’s leadership is so committed tokeeping working teachers from having the right to strike. I think that their over-reliance on bureaucratic ‘Taylor Law’ tactics underminesthe potency of our organizing. And, I worry that if UFT leadership is relying on the threat ofPERBrather than the culmination of good organizing (i.e. the viable ‘strike’ threat), the City has little reason to react to the limited organizing it does see.
But strike threat or not, the more of us that show up to contract actions, the more of a reason the City has to listen to us. So, I’m showing up. I’m showing up, because, like it or not, this is the official organizing we have. It’s what we’ve put our entire union’s dues, staff efforts, and volunteer work into producing.
Here is a copy and paste for those wanting to share with their staffs.
OUR BIG 5 UFT CONTRACT DEMANDS – OR WE MUST VOTE ‘NO’! We need a truly fair contract that we, our families and school communities can live and thrive on. Anything less - means we must vote ‘NO”! Take the BIG 5 pledge: http://big5.unitedforchange.vote
DEMANDS WHY? 1 FAIR PAY WITH RAISES WE DESERVE AND PAY PARITY - We demand raises for all UFT members that match or outpace the skyrocketing cost of living in the NYC area. Paraprofessionals should be paid a living wage. Occupational therapists and physical therapists, with entry level masters or doctoral requirements, should have pay parity with other educator titles. We should be close to top pay much earlier in our careers. We live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and inflation has hit us hard here. With numbers at 6% and cost of living at 9%, none of us can afford 3 or 3.5% raises. Some of our titles are being hit particularly hard. Paraprofessionals, for instance, form the backbone of our schools. They have some of the most physically demanding jobs, but are not paid a living wage. They deserve pay that reflects the reality of their hard work. There are also some titles that make less than UFT-represented positions with comparable labor/education requirements. Occupational therapists’ and physical therapists’ salaries top out at $81K while other titles with similar degree requirements top out near $120K. They deserve to be fairly compensated for their work. We all do!
2 PREMIUM-FREE, QUALITY HEALTHCARE - We demand that our choice and quality of existing healthcare plans be expanded and improved - not diminished or replaced with inferior options. If significant changes are proposed, they must be fully disclosed to us and put to a vote by members. Voting on such collective bargaining items is our right. (See healthcare referendum petition: http://hcpetition.educators.nyc) Our healthcare, and the healthcare for our families, should not be leveraged in salary negotiations. Healthcare is a mandatory subject of collective bargaining that to our detriment has been greatly diminished, especially in the last 2 contracts - 2014 & 2018. In 2018, the City and Mulgrew agreed to “cost savings" of $600 million dollars every year, in perpetuity. Since then, retirees have been forced into an inferior privatized Medicare Advantage plan. In-service members have seen increases in co-pays, dental, eye and mental health care deteriorate, and our entire plans are about to be changed. This was done without member consent. Changes were not fully disclosed at the time of contract votes. Let us have informed votes on significant changes.
3 SMALLER CLASS SIZE GUARANTEE - We demand that new NYS class size caps for grades K-12 be contractually guaranteed. We need enforceable mechanisms to ensure that the City follows the new law. The newly passed state law that sets lower class size caps must be fully implemented by 2028. However, the City is already balking at implementing the law and not fully funding schools or capital building investments to this end. Also, there are at least four existing loopholes in the law that will result in the lack of enforcement of the new caps. Our existing contractual class size caps are over 50 years old. We have a golden opportunity to codify the new law contractually. Putting the new class size limits into our contract adds needed teeth to a law that otherwise might go unenforced. Give us the ability to grieve oversized classes, so that our students get the small class sizes they deserve.
4 REAL TEACHER AUTONOMY, ALONG WITH REDUCED CASELOADS We demand an end to micromanaged professional periods and unproductive PDs. Teachers are the best judge of how to use our non-teaching time. Let us decide how to use it. The caseloads of IEP teachers, related service and guidance counselors must be contractually capped. Day after day, teachers are pulled to work meaningless C6 assignments that have nothing to do with their instruction. What could be an extra period to plan, assess, and collaborate, becomes yet another moment of meetings and paperwork. Every Monday, this is compounded in long ‘professional development’ periods that take over an hour of our time for meetings no one needs. As a result, teachers end up doing much of their work at home, which eats into their personal and family lives. The same can be said for IEP teachers, counselors, and related service providers, whose uncapped caseloads force them to bring their work home. Give us our time back. Cap caseloads and eliminate unnecessary meetings/C6 assignments.
5 IMPROVEMENTS TO TENURE, EVALUATIONS, PAID FAMILY LEAVE AND TIER 6 PENSIONS - Tenure and pensions are under attack. Evaluations are out of control. Paid family leave is insufficient. The City must agree contractually to lobby the State for reforms and changes. We’ve made agreements like this in the past, and they’ve worked. It’s due time we do so again. The Danielson rubric has been weaponized against us, instead of being supportive. Tenure is being denied for 8 or 9 years, leaving new teachers without due process and forcing them to leave the system. Under Tier 6, teachers will need to be teaching nearly 40 years to retire! We should have 25/55 offered to this tier. Paid family leave for most New Yorkers is 12 weeks. Educators deserve the same. Union leadership has chosen to tell us a half truth when it comes to these issues. We’ve been told that we can’t negotiate these issues because they are linked to state laws and other regulations. Nonetheless, they fail to tell us that we can, indeed, get the City to commit to lobbying the state to make or approve needed changes. In some cases, the City itself can make the changes. We’ve successfully done so in previous contracts.
Watch the interview Sam did with Vilma Serrano, the Oakland Teacher.
Here is another example of an abusive Unity Chapter leader mistreating a UFT retiree, as if MulgrewCare was not enough mistreatment of retirees by Unity Caucus. I reported on the PS 107K story:
The chapter leader of IS 44M was even more over the top, violating numerous chancellor regs and UFT election rules -- and also happens to be a prominent Unity candidate. Just a few photos of her work at the school - with Unity posters all over the place.
Given that her actions could spark on investigation over these violations we are not using her name in this report.
The report is from retiree Sheila Zukowsky of Retiree Advocate, who has been active in UFT elections for the first time -- yes, due to MulgrewCare - as she explains in the excellent podcast with Noah on his excellent PD podcasts. It is a great listen:
I was interviewed regarding my aborted attempt to flyer
the IS44M building for the podcast "Professional Development: The New
York City Teacher Podcast".
Here is Sheila's written report which will be incorporated into the general election complaint being filed by United for Change.
I entered the former IS 44 M building at 100 W 77 St,
Manhattan, at about 2 pm on April 14, 2022 in order to distribute
informational flyers to UFT members working in the building for the UFT
election ending on May 9, 2022.
When I entered the building, I saw each of the 3 doors
in the vestibule all had Unity flyers on every one, plus two in the
lobby: one on a pillar, and one on the the security guard's plexiglass partition
facing the public, which was the first thing I saw when I walked
through the vestibule doors intro the lobby of the building.
I was startled by the display of electioneering
materials that were prohibited by the Chancellor's Regulations which was
apparently going on with the blessing of the administrations of the 2
separate schools that occupied the building. The posting of these
materials were in clear violation of Chancellor's Regulation D-130,
which specifically states in Section I. B. 3. that material supporting
candidates or slates may not be posted or displayed in a school building
except on union bulletin boards in areas closed to students.
I told the security guard who I was and why I was
there, She called one of the two schools, which was apparently MS 245
and spoke to someone looking to receive permission for me to enter. I
was told to wait and someone would see to me shortly. A woman arrived in
the lobby of the school who did not introduced herself as from M245 as
as having been "pulled out of class" but did not introduce herself
further. I assumed I introduced myself and stated what my business at
the school was. I presumed my interlocutor was the principal, an
assistant principal, or someone else involved in the management of the
school.
She was polite and calm but nevertheless was persistent
in arguing with me about my right to distribute election flyers at the
school. She repeatedly told me that I could not be there on "Department
of Education time" although I explained that according to the
Chancellor's Regulation D-130 I.C.3., this prohibition was relevant to
DOE personnel only, and that I was not a DOE employee. Nevertheless, she
continued to make the same argument over and over, until I offered to
show her the Chancellor's Regulation in question as well as other
documents affirming my right to distribute literature. At that moment,
she relented, which indicated to me that she had been aware all along
that she knew I had the right to be there but was attempting to wear me
down in the hope that I would go away. At that moment, she consented
to allow me to distribute the literate but she said she would have to
"watch me" while I was doing it.
It was only in getting to the 4th floor, where the
school's office was located, that I found out she was not a school
administrator at all but the school's chapter leader. I found this out
when I asked her if the schools' administrators approved of the
posting UFT electioneering material in the public areas of the school,
as I knew it was in violation of the Chancellor's Regs, and that the
school principals were supposed to enforce this prohibition, according
to D-130, Section I, B., 7.
At that moment, I realized I was not speaking to a
school administrator, as she replied, "Well, if you had been paying
attention, you would have noticed my picture on the flyer since I am a
chapter leader in this building".
When we got to the office where the mailboxes were
located, she stood there, in the tiny office, watching me as I placed
flyers in 3 mailboxes. Then she announced that she had to be at an
assembly in 10 minutes, and insisted that I leave and give the flyers to
the school secretary, who was sitting nearby, for distribution.
Therefore the Chapter Leader again committed a violation of the
Chancellor's Regs by asking the secretary to distribute the literature
during Department of Education time, which, as a DOE employee, she was
prohibited from doing.
When I asked the secretary if that was ok, she just
shrugged. It seemed to me that the secretary did not know or did not
want to admit to me whether or not she should be taking orders from the Chapter Leader, especially orders which would have her violate the Chancellor's
Regulations.
In all, I feel that during the episode described above,
the following Chancellor's Regs in D-130, Section I, B were violated by the Chapter Leader and indeed, the school's principal:
1. The use of any Department of Education school during school/business hours by any person, group, organization, committee, etc., on behalf of, or for the benefit of any elected official, candidate, candidates, slate of candidates or political organization/committee is prohibited.
3. No material supporting any candidate,
candidates, slate of candidates or political organization/committee may
be distributed, posted, or displayed in any school building except as
noted in Section I.B.4 below:
4. Staff mailboxes and union bulletin
boards in schools and district and central headquarters offices are to
be used for the following purposes only:
(2) by the union for the dissemination of union-related materials. Toward that end, the union may:
a. Place materials advocating the
election of a candidate, candidates, slate of candidates or political
organization/committee in staff mailboxes.
b. Post materials advocating the election
of a candidate, candidates, slate of candidates or political
organization/committee on union bulletin boards located in areas closed
to students.
7. The principal is responsible for ensuring that unauthorized material is not posted, distributed or displayed.
