UNITY Caucus Contract Gaslighting, Show Rallies, Mulgrew postures on a strike, Why Vote NO Will Win a Better Contract, UFT Election Officials Refuse to Reveal Para Election Numbers

Tuesday May 30 - Too much news to report, but here goes anyway

Rumors that oppo in para election won two out of 5 positions up for grabs. The para chapter is the second largest (28k)after retirees in the UFT. Try to imagine how a general election (in 2025) would look of both of these chapters were close. Unity will pull out all stops, especially in the 2024 chapter elections. Watch those numbers (if they are honest) for signs of breakage in the Unity front.

When people used to claim Unity cheats in elections I always responded they don't have to steal an election - until elections get close and contentious. Then it's Katy bar the door. I firmly believe that if UFC ever won, Unity would pull a Trump and refuse to leave. 

There's a breaking story on the recent UFT para chapter election to replace leaders who have retired or left for the next year until the regular 2024 chapter elections with hints of Unity playing games and a refusal by UFT election officials to release voting counts. Educators of NYC has the preliminary story while we get more details. I reported on April 15:

Corruption @UFT in Para Election: Full-time patronnage jobs -- Unity is more interested in Unity than its membership: Contentious UFT Para Chapter Election - Does Unity Cheat? I Know, you're shocked! 

It's an old  Unity ploy  - to offer jobs to potential oppo people. Do you know what scares them to hell about a strike? Due to loss of dues checkoff hey would have to cut staff and lose this advantage. And don't be surprised to see Unity try to pull a bait and switche by replacing Mulgrew and Tom Murphy in their next elections. Don't be fooled --- Unity will always be Unity no matter who's in charge.

 

UFT holds contract rallies: Not everyone buys in  

There were multiple rallies on Wednesday, including the UFT rallies at the boroughs. One of my friends asked why I didn't mention them. Frankly, holding union rallies in 5 boroughs rather than trying for a massive rally only made sense because the leadership had no confidence in mobilizing a mass. So dilution it was. I hear the one in Queens was big - maybe 5-600 but other boroughs not as strong.

...our union is weakened by demonstrations that are essentially just for show. There are times to stand up, and when those times come along, we're either asleep or being stabbed in the back by the Municipal Labor Committee, including our esteemed leadership. More likely, we're asleep and being stabbed in the back by leadership. ...I'm not energized by lies. I'm energized by fighting for real progress.  Our leadership, Mulgrew included, is moving us backward. We should be a vibrant force, the "powerful teachers union" the tabloids are always complaining about. Instead, we're a sleeping giant. Step one in awakening this sleeping giant is tossing the Unity Caucus out of power. We'll begin that process with the retirees. I hope to be one by election time.... Arthur Goldstein, NYC Educator

Arthur is on target. UFT leaders will claim the rallies have an impact. On whom? I don't think the powers that be are scared by a few thousand people, if even that many showed. Unity Caucus has over a thousand members, so they are required to show up. And the opposition, so constantly denigrated by Unity hacks, are the most loyal in supporting union initiatives, no matter how lame they may be, even though they point out the flaws.

Rousing rank and filers is hard - but also dangerous to the leadership.

The UFT has about 130k working members. Flood the streets and bridges with 50k and that would make a statement. But when you put contract negotiations under a non-disclosure agreement so the members and the public have no idea what exactly is going on, don't expect results. So the rallies are more about internal issues. An attempt to rouse the membership. But not to much rousing.

Nick Bacon had a similar take as Arthur at the New Action blog:

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...the preparation meetings for May 24th have been feel-good Unity-heavy events that seemed to lack substance. Moreover, using an event like what is planned on May 24th for ‘yes-vote’ purposes rather than negotiating purposes would keep with the MO of other ‘Taylor law proud’ union leaders, such as those of DC37, who held a major rally on Feb. 16, only to announce a tentative agreement with the City the next day (Feb. 17). That deal, we now know, cemented one of the worst patterns in the history of the NYC labor movement. That pattern, we’re now stuck with.

Arthur

It's fine that UFT is out there. But the fact is, the overwhelming majority are not. The overwhelming majority of us are essentially asleep. That's been a feature of our union for decades. You can tell when people speak about it. People say terrible things about the UFT, not realizing they're describing themselves. Sadly, pathetically even, a lot of us feel no responsibility for anything whatsoever regarding our union. For many of us, the union is somehow the people sitting in offices. 

Nick 

it’s a mistake that our union’s leadership is so committed to keeping working teachers from having the right to strike. I think that their over-reliance on bureaucratic ‘Taylor Law’ tactics undermines the potency of our organizing. And, I worry that if UFT leadership is relying on the threat of PERB rather 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.

Nick and oppo are mocked by Unity all the time for standing up to them. Witness this recent Unity leaflet:

You see, you are disloyal if you question, just like any authoritarian regime. Yeah, Unity does the work - of the scam private insurance companies.

There were other rallies taking place on May 24.

A fun rally at city hall, followed by bird dogging Mayor Adams - and the police response to 30 old codgers and a load of cops

I posted that morning just as I was leaving for the Rally and Protest Day for Retirees opposing UFT on Healthcare, People's Plan opposing budget cuts and UFT for the contract

The CROC (Cross Union Organizing Committee) rally was at 9:30 outside City Hall was separate from other demos going on at the same time - much younger workers who joined a long line to testify at City Council hearings. I gave out copies of The Indypendent with my article comparing the dynamic Chicago Teacher and Los Angeles unions with the moribund UFT: A Tale of Two Teachers Unions comparing influence of progressive Chicago CTU with Tepid UFT - Norm's article in The Indypendent.

Rather than go into the council CROC (consisting of UFT, DC 37, CUNY and other city union retirees) had people read their submitted testimony outside. At 10:30 we heard that Mayor Adams would be appearing along side the Brooklyn Bridge to celebrate its birthday and we decided to birddog him and marched to the area under an overpass shouting slogans on a public walkway until police saw us and put a metal battier in our way. Gloria made a little video from the Rally at City Hall "Do Not Screw Retirees, Mayor Adams!" https://youtu.be/aUfrCBSNWgE.

Why Vote NO? Why not? 

Unity whiners cry about our 5 demands before voting YES. They will argue we go to the back of the line, blah, blah, blah. In 1995 we rejected the contract which raised from 20 to 25 years of work to reach max salary. Sandy Feldman said if we think we can do better we must be smoking something. Well take a tote because they came back with 22 to reach max. Think of how much money people have saved over the decades with those extra 3 years? Not a total victory because it was still a giveback, only not as bad. And the OT/PT chapter rejected the 2018 contract and the redo came back with a few nuggets. So there is precedence.

We gain leverage with a no vote by demonstrating members are unhappy are ready to go beyond the leadership. Cred threat of a strike either led by leadership or wildcat actions - as we've seen from teachers around the nation over the past 5 years.

I urged a VOTE NO - a year ago and go back to Ed Notes in 2009 as a reference

Thursday, June 23, 2022

I've been mocking the UFT/Unity leadership over its faux negotiating committee farce for years.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

UFT Contract UFT Cast of Thousands Contract Committee
I raised some questions on the then 350 member Neg Comm, now expanded to as many as can fit in the cone of silence dome.

Questions on the Negotiation Committee: How are people chosen to be on this committee? Of the 350 committee members how many are in Unity Caucus? Does secrecy mean that Unity Caucus members don’t discuss the issues brought up for discussion among themselves? Are we to believe that the only discussion that takes place among Unity Caucus members is in the committee room?

If you think top level Unity don't discuss the issues beforehand, take a walk on the bridge you just bought.

In fact, I believe just about all contract issues have been pre-decided by the leadership and their main problem is how to filter the info out to the negotiating committee and how to do it to make it look democratic. Every committee will echo the election committee with a Unity majority. I like that there are people who want to be on the neg Comm even if having to sign the NDA and also that there are people who won't sign.

 

 

We know the contract will suck and many in the opposition will call for a Vote No campaign - in fact I'm starting the campaign right now -- oh, shit, retirees don't get to vote on the contract. You working stiffs have my proxy.

Some Unity slug will stop by to comment on how dumb I am.

 

 I urge people to accept the reality and just call for a NO VOTE NOW.

Mulgrew joins UFT to private insurance scam artists

 

I urge you to read this report from The Lever on The $20 Billion Scam At The Heart Of Medicare Advantage, which will outrage you, especially since Mulgrew has placed our own union and all city retirees at the service of the enormously profitable private insurance companies that will lead to the end of Medicare as we know it as public funds are drained into stock givebacks and exec salaries. What the UFT, with the support of the AFT president Randi Weingarten did was help bring about the end of the only publicly managed option, the very opposite of their claims to want a medicare for all system. 

When I sent this article above to my wife who ran the billing system for a division of a major hospital, she rolled her eyes and said she's known about these schemes for 30 years from pressure being put on doctors with gifts, etc to upcode to make people sicker than they are. She often tried to resist dishonest coding and was not very popular with some administrators.

At a recent Retired Teacher meeting a woman explained that upcoding can be harmful for us as patients as our records would not be accurate if we had an emergency.

From the last UFT ex Bd meeting

Unity hack1: There was not one time that I voted on a contract that I wasn’t aware what my union pointed out to me and what I chose to read. I don’t think any of our members need two weeks to look at what is important to our members. I think this resolution is somewhat insulting, that it would take anyone two weeks to read what is important. I trust our union leadership, and I trust our union.

Unity hack2: How many people presenting this have actually read the contract and the 2018 MOA? How could you possibly have harmony? How could we have that whenever we have exec boards and DAs things are reported out negatively? Imagine the negativity that will come out if 2 weeks notice are given. Right now we have a vote no campaign – you haven’t even seen the contract.

A few Takeaways:

We gain leverage with a no vote - demonstrates to city members are ready to go beyond leadership

Cred threat of a strike either led by leadership or wildcat actions - as we've seen from teachers around the nation over the past 5 years

Penalties on members are harsh in two for one but harsher on leadership which can be fined extensively and lose dues checkoff - catastrophic for UFT if had to collect dues individually.

 

Mulgrew mentions the S word - and people LOL- EONYC comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

trying to argue that it’s not illegal for public sector workers to strike in NYS is laughable. Mulgrew said it just means “you can but you have to pay fines”. While Section 210 of Taylor Law reads “PROHIBITION OF STRIKES”. He also failed to say union leaders are fined + jailed. The word play is intentional as his Unity leadership caucus has done nothing to lobby against the Taylor law provision that makes an unfettered right to strike possible, despite calls from

@UFT

rank and file. Imagine telling someone during the 1920’s Prohibition: Buying alcohol is not illegal. It’s just prohibited with some fines. Or the cop who pulls you over: My tinted windows are prohibited but not illegal. In fact, your dictionary will likely define illegal as not lawful or prohibited by law. When something is prohibited by an authority like the state it is ILLEGAL. See Shanker thrown in jail in last illegal teacher strike in 1975. Striking is a human right. And should not be prohibited/illegal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting factoid from NYCDOE

 
UFT, DOE and class size

A community activist comments:

"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

If Mulgrew is serious about 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

http://tinyurl.com/big5demands

Note the guest blogger today at ICE blog - the famous RBE, formerly proprietor of Perdido Street School blog.

Waiting for Mikey

Guest Blogger: RBE

 

Today is Rally and Protest Day for Retirees opposing UFT on Healthcare, People's Plan opposing budget cuts and UFT for the contract

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:

• United for Change: OUR BIG 5 UFT CONTRACT DEMANDS – OR WE MUST VOTE ‘NO’! - Take the Pledge to vote NO! If They Are not included

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.

Nick has the notes of the full meeting:

• UFT Members – Why is UFT Leadership Misleading us on Contract? – Executive Board Minutes, 5-22-2023

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 NYC Council 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.

 

Organizers: Cross-union Retirees Organizing Committee (CROC)

 

Media contact:

 

Sarah Shapiro, CROC

sarahmorah@gmail.com

###

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.

 

 

United for Change: OUR BIG 5 UFT CONTRACT DEMANDS – OR WE MUST VOTE ‘NO’! - Take the Pledge to vote NO! If They Are not included

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.

• Read more on the demands and take the pledge: https://big5.unitedforchange.vote

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.

https://hcpetition.educators.nyc/

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 interviews Vilma 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

NICK BACON

MAY 21, 2023

On Wednesday, May 24^th, our union will hold what is likely to be the 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 to keeping working teachers from having the right to strike. I think that their over-reliance on bureaucratic ‘Taylor Law’ tactics undermines the potency of our organizing. And, I worry that if UFT leadership is relying on the threat of PERB rather 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.

 Read it all at The Wire:

 

https://big5.unitedforchange.vote

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.