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!
I have to run to catch the ferry for a few rallies today but I don't think I'll last past the early morning one. Today is the big rally day for the UFT for the contract. Unity snowflakes have been whining about the opposition actually asking for real contract items:
I attended the UFT Ex Bd meeting Monday night -- Unity seemed pretty upset at the opposition - how dare we call for a real contract, which increasingly looks like a 3% pattern with some tweaks. Adams might throw a little bone in exchange for the UFT leadership selling out the retirees on healthcare. In the meantime they are avoiding talking about the healthcare savings for the city coming out of working UFTers - co-pay creep, the probably replacement of GHI by Aetna -- none of these are negotiable they tell us.
Monday the Unity snowflakes were vexed by a UFC motion calling for taking time to actually read the contract. resolution on contract full disclosure. They whined that two weeks is too long but they could have amended that to a few days but they didn't even do that. A Unity hack who is supposed to represent teachers as a special rep, said she only cares about the high schools and doesn't read the rest of the contract. That explains a lot about someone who was well-known to pull oppo lit out of mailboxes as a chapter leader.
I've been in some twitter debates with Unity supporters who don't seem to think beyond the propaganda. What is holding up the contract when we know the pattern is the pattern and class size is off the table? The amount of shit teachers are asked to do plus the extended time crap seem to be a biggie for members and the city is not moving on that. What leverage does the UFT have? Rallies today? Not enough teeth in just that. They might worm a few nuggets out of Adams and then sell them as the greatest contract ever.
I pointed out that the dome of silence over negotiations offers nothing to people who are organizing in the schools and communities. As I pointed out in my article in The Indypendent, a difference between Chicago/LA and NY is they are using open bargaining to organize while our 500 negotiators have a muzzle on.
One thing I do know is that if UFC ever was a threat of winning, the DOE would back Unity all the way. I was once told by Joel Klein's honcho during the 2012 Chicago strike - he really seemed worried it could happen here - and I laughed and said never with Unity in charge.
I will say -- the turkey was pretty good. And loved that cheesecake - I think I will ask LeRoy to order me some rice pudding for the June 5 meeting.
Here is where I'm headed to now - maybe see you there.
Media Advisory for Wednesday, May 24th 9:30AM
Municipal retirees will gather outside City Hall on Wednesday May 24th to hold a People’s Hearing and Rally to protest Mayor Adam’s ongoing efforts to compel them into a subpar privatized Medicare Advantage plan. Retirees will testify about the deleterious effects of Medicare Advantage health plans. Demands will be made that the City Council act now to protect retirees’ Medicare health benefits by passing the current legislation which will enshrine these rights and by including retiree healthcare costs in the city budget.
The message to Mayor Adams is STOP SCREWING RETIREES! The message to NYC elected officials is PASS the RETIREE MEDICARE BILL! SAVE NYC RETIREE MEDICARE! WE VOTE! Retirees will then testify inside City Hall at the public budget hearing. Later, retirees will join the People’s Plan Rally and March to protest the city’s austerity budget and to demand Care not Cuts.
Municipal retirees expect NYCCouncil Member Christopher Marte, Kristin Richardson Jordan, Alexa Aviles, Chi Osse and possibly others to join them.
WHERE: Broadway between Murray Street and Park Place outside
of City Hall Park
WHEN: May 24th (Wednesday) from 9:30-11.
Retirees join People’s Plan Care not Cuts March at 5:00.
VISUALS:
Retirees with signs and banners, chanting and music outside City Hall urging a life-size cutout of Mayor Adams to Stop Screwing Retirees! Retirees wearing head bands of screws going through their heads give oral testimonies about the devastating effects private Medicare Advantage plans will have on their health. Free screws will be given out to symbolize that city workers, even when retired, should never be mistreated.
The Cross-union Retiree Organizing Committee (CROC) are rank-and-file NYC municipal retirees who say NO to the City’s attempts to force municipal retirees into a privatized Medicare Advantage plan.
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.
In contrast to Chicago and Los Angeles’s teachers unions, New York
City’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has partnered with the Adams
administration to move its retirees from Medicare, the only public
health-car option, to a privatized Aetna Medicare Advantage plan. An
amendment at the union’s Delegate Assembly calling for the UFT to lobby
to remove New York State’s ban on public-sector strikes led union
leaders to denounce the move with arguments that ranged from the
obscure to the ridiculous. Recent headlines on an opposition blog
captured the moment: “Why doesn’t UFT leadership want us to have the
right to strike?” Why have teachers unions in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York taken
such divergent paths? What is New York City losing by having a neutered
teachers union that eschews militant grassroots organizing in favor of
insider politicking?--- Norm Scott in The Indypendent
I was asked to write an article for The Indypendent on the differences between the left wing teacher unions in Chicago and Los Angeles compared to the UFT. I didn't have the space to a deeper dive. Fundamental politics is that the left unions line up with the Berrnie Sanders wing of the Dem Party - clearly a minority vs the UFT lining up with the Dem Party center/corporate wing. What better example than the UFT leadership support for privatized Medicare Advantage and undercutting Medicare, the only publicly controlled option for healthcare? I also didn't get into the deeper reasons of a union controlled by one party for 60 years and how that helps distort the opposition forces and their ability to function. Let me also say right out, the opposition over the past 50 years has not been blameless but often tries to shunt off blame on the leadership. As part of that opposition for 5 decades I don't shun an analysis of what has not resonated with enough of the membership to topple Unity. I also didn't get into United for Change future prospects. Are teachers in Chi/LA so different from NYC or is it a combo of leadership (no Unity Caucus in those cities) and oppo failure or are there deeper issues? I will follow up.
On April 4, former Chicago public-school teacher and Chicago Teacher
Union (CTU) organizer Brandon Johnson was elected mayor of Chicago. His
opponent was Paul Vallas, former CEO of the Chicago school system and an
adamant foe of the CTU who staked out tough-on-crime positions that
were expected to give him a clear path to victory. The long and tangled
history between Vallas and the CTU made this victory especially sweet.
Vallas was the favorite of The Chicago Tribune, pro-charter
school billionaires, the police union, Republicans in general and
corporate Democrats, including the Obama wing of the party.
The rise of the leftist Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE),
founded in 2008 and taking power in the CTU in 2010, galvanized the
nation’s labor movement with a 2012 strike that embarrassed Chicago
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Obama administration shortly before the 2012
presidential election. To pull off the strike, the CTU hired organizers,
including Brandon Johnson, to spread its message. Street actions,
including demonstrations at banks, were part of the strategy. The
union’s power and influence in Chicago have only grown.
I'd also recommend reading the review I co-wrote of the Shanker bio which gets into some of the issues.
Tax filings show that from 2006 to 2018, the Tisch foundation gave nearly $50,000 to the Eagle Academy Foundation, where Banks was founder and then president and CEO.
UPDATE May 2 - Monday night the community was ignored by one vote and these kids are being evicted into a smaller space.
Another assault on the poorest kids by the billionaire class with their little pet projects, even if their schools are technically not charters. The story I'm hearing is that most of the students at West Side HS live nearby on the west side. Some have children and their child care is near the school. The Tisch family has been anti-public education for decades with Meryl Tish being a Bloomberg agent of deform - and his next door neighbor. This Ann Tisch is her sister in law. Meryl Tisch daughter Jessica runs Sanitation Dept now.
Ed Notes has written about the Tish deformers for years, which I list at the bottom of this article.
Daniel Alicea covered the story on Talk Out of School on WBAI last night. He also talked to NYC Educator Arthur Goldstein.
Daniel's co-host Leonie Haimson has also been in the fight - also see her tweets below, but here is one about the corrupt relationships
Some West Side supporters question whether Andrew & Ann Tisch donations to Eagle Academy led by Banks until appointed as Chancellor is playing a role in DOE’s plans to evict
students from their building in favor of school founded by Tisch
Great story by Liz Rosenberg on planned eviction of
West Side High—one of the city’s first transfer schools for over-aged,
under-credited HS schools – from their supportive home, which includes a
day care center for the young children of the students, a GED program
and a full-size gym to make room for the Young Women’s Leadership
School, part of a selective chain of schools founded by Ann Tisch, wife
of billionaire Jonathan Tisch.
You use decorum to silence people who hold you accountable. All you are doing is using decorum as a means of oppression..... Montana House of Representatives Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr on being banned for voicing opposition to transgender legislation
Decorum, it seems, is honored lately more as an ideal than a
practice. Outbursts at our December RTC membership meeting come to mind.... Tom Murphy, UFT Retired Teacher Chapter Chair
Give us liberty or give us decorum
You hear calls for civility -
assume best intentions - even when there are no best intentions. Shutting out voices is itself uncivil. I've known the feeling over the decades of being a minority voice in many organizations.
But oppression can lead to greater activism against the voices of oppression. Mulgrew and crew try to brand all dissidents as fear mongerers and liers, which is itself fear mongering and lying.
Rosa Parks was not civil
Just like in Tennessee and
Montana, the outcome at the April Retired Teacher meeting, where few even noticed the signs,
was that Murphy's outburst called attention to them - I was outside the room and rushed in when I heard the ruckus - and have some audio of Murphy screaming but am too inept technology wise to share it.
Teacher unions in LA and Chicago have not been civil and have won big victories
The latest news has been
big losses for the UFT on charters and school budgets and an upcoming
contract that the union will try to put lipstick on the pig. Maybe it's
time for the UFT/Unity cowering hordes to be uncivil. But wait -- they
are uncivil to those who stand up to them in the opposition.
The late, great George Schmidt of Chicago, told me back when the caucus he helped found tried to purge him, partly over his gruffness framed as lack of civility. (It didn't work and the vote was heavily in his favor). I and a few others know the feeling as we faced similar attacks here in NYC. I'm not uncivil - just a loud-mouthed Jew from Brooklyn. Some Jews learned a long time ago about the consequences of being civil in the face of oppression. Not all unfortunately. In Israel, they are doing bad shit unto others as was done unto them and that can lead to uncivil reactions, which leads to further oppression because authoritarians have no other mechanisms to use.
So, it was an LOL moment to see Mr. Civility and Decorum, Tom Murphy, screaming "Put down those signs" at the bold, energetic retirees who use the pronouns she/her standing proudly in the back of the room and not only calling security, but threatening to close down the meeting if the signs were not removed. Watching the video of Zooey Zephyr being censured by right wing anti-democracy forces, along with the Tennessee banning of black legislators over a faux decorum issue, is beautifully ironic. (Murphy once accused me of antisemitism because my Ed Notes cartoonist made Randi's nose look too big.)
By the way, where does it say in by-laws or constitution that there are no signs allowed?
