UFT grievance procedure: Go in young, emerge ready to retire.I attended the UFT Delegate Assembly yesterday (see James Eterno's full report at the ICE blog) and so many issues came up, I am going to tackle them one at a time in separate posts.
Randi Weingarten made a big deal about an arbitration decision based on a grievance filed by teacher Todd Friedman over getting a U-rating based on taking more than the 10 days as specified in the contract. He took 11. He had an illness and his dad died and he had to go to Florida and he took a few extra days beyond his bereavement time.
His arbitration victory means circumstances of the teacher like illness and death in the family must be taken into account by principals before they bestow a U-rating for excessive absence.
Now, we have heard that principals are will nilly deciding to give U-ratings based on whatever number of days they decide is too much. They want to show Tweed they are rooting out evil doers.
They are able to do this because of the enablers at the UFT.
Randi celebrated the fact that Todd had the guts to stand up and file a grievance and said the union can't do anything unless a teacher stands up. Huh? Don't get me started with this "blame the victim" attitude on the part of the union. There's plenty they could do but choose not to.
"You see, you have to fight City Hall," said Randi as she called Todd up to speak.
"I had to fight the union grievance department to get them to file the grievance the way I wanted," said Todd. "It was only after I appealed to Randi that I got them to change it."
Ooops! Fighting City Hall turns out to be the union grievance department itself.
Randi sort of stood there with egg on her face and repeated her statement about fighting City Hall, even if it's her own grievance department.
Later, I caught up with the special rep who handled Todd's case. "Nice job," I said. "But the people making these decisions that force a teacher to appeal to the union president should be punished," I said. We have to be careful not to risk lose cases that would hurt more people was the gist of her answer.
That attitude has been our complaint for 35 years - first allow incredible loopholes that allow administrators who know what they're doing (and the Leadership Academy has made sure to train principals to expose every loophole) to hammer teachers and then don't take a militant stand in the hope some principals don't know better.
But here's the real rub. Now that we have this "victory" let's say a principal ignores it and does the same thing. What recourse does the teacher have? Do they get an expedited "show them the arbitration and the U comes off immediately?"
I bet not. The union will tell them to, guess what, file a grievance and cite the arbitration.
Follow the bouncing ball:
Step 1: Principal says he/she doesn't accept the teacher's reasons.
Step 2 - oops! The UFT gave that up in the 2005 contract
Step 3 - the chancellor's level where the hearing officer works for, guess who? - Joel Klein. Automatic win for the principal, who is always right.
Now wait a year to go to an arbitrator who might rule in favor of the teacher (not a sure bet as the arbitrator could look at the circumstances and say the principal was right - these people have to split the wins between the union and DOE to stay employed, so if your turn comes up bad, too bad.)
In the meantime, the teacher's U-rating has prevented him from getting per session or maybe even taking a transfer.
Thus, the great union victory on grievances.
