Coalitions, The Left Doesn't want to win - The Implosion of Progressive Organizing - Ryan Grim - The Intercept on Call Out Culture on the Left

Stop hiring activists - Bernie Sanders -
During the 2020 presidential campaign, as entry-level staffers for [Bernie] Sanders repeatedly agitated over internal dynamics, despite having already formed a staff union, the senator issued a directive to his campaign leadership: ‘Stop hiring activists.’ Instead, Sanders implored, according to multiple campaign sources, the campaign should focus on bringing on people interested first and foremost in doing the job they’re hired to do.”

If you don’t have a coalition, you don’t have power...these groups being in Overton mode, when there are actual wins on the table to possibly be had, his argument, and I heard this from a lot of people as well, is that there’s something about the left, and its hostility or its skepticism of coercion, that just makes it allergic to power, that it just doesn’t want to be in power. As one person said: If you’re not uncomfortable all of the time, then you’re not in a coalition. Because being in a coalition means that you are in coalition with people who disagree with you on some things, because if they didn’t disagree with you on some things — NR: They would be in the same group. RG: [Laughs.] They would be in your group! Right! And so if you’re never feeling discomfort, you don’t have a coalition. ... The Intercept

These comments are so apt considering the recent United for Change coalition, where various stands from the center left to the far left came together for UFT elections. [Note stories from France where the always divided left - Socialists, Communists and Green - came together.] Has "the left" learned a lesson? Note the UFT election debacle of 2019 with three groups running and losing badly as a key lesson. But Bernie's comment, explained in detail below, about activists, recalls some stories I was told during the election about "activists" and the different concepts of activism - some unresolved issues in many groups.

Mike Antonucci chimes in on the Grim piece:

“Progressive organizations are run like shit,” said one of Grim’s sources, and it’s a sentiment I’ve heard before. But teachers unions have an asset that most progressive organizations don’t: a huge, automatic cash flow. It’s used to placate the staff while keeping control of the agenda in the hands of management. So while there may be similar schisms within NEA and AFT, they will not rise to a level of outright rebellion… at least, as long as the money holds out.

Also check out his piece from a couple of years ago on what it's like to work for Randi's AFT:  

“Favoritism is rampant. Office politics are sometimes terrible.” “The headquarters has an often toxic culture of petty jealousies and long-simmering grievances.”

Ya think?

But - 

The seizing of a trifecta in Washington by Democrats has coincided with a mass social movement demobilization. Those activated by Trump have stepped back. Democratic leaders spent more energy attacking the phrase “defund the police” than they invested in police reform, 

Is there a parallel in the UFT Oppo movement with a lack of post-election activity by United for Change? Has UFC demobilized? There has not been an internal crisis as chronicled in groups below - just apathy. But it's' only a month and Retiree Advocate is as active as ever. [Retirees - Rally June 16 noon: Tell Mayor Adams to Stop the Switch to Medicare Advantage - Rally Also June 15 at 4:30 PM].

Many progressive groups seem to be suffering from internal crises.

....at the height of the negotiations last summer over Build Back Better, that the Sierra Club vanished from the private and public conversation, because they were so caught up in turmoil that the entire institution’s energy was all being directed inward. And this is at a time where the climate movement is saying we have 10 years left to turn this thing around. And we might have just a couple months left on a Democratic trifecta. And they’re all just utterly consumed by these internal debates....

after 1968, after Richard Nixon was elected president, you had this kind of collapse and demobilization of the left. There was still a war to protest. But the demonstrations against the war never reached their peak, which they hit around 1965 or so.

The Intercept

For me this article is not an abstract concept. I've been involved in various versions of left politics for over 50 years and have seen some of the issues raised up close and personal. I was once called out - by a white guy - for using the expression about some clueless people as "just off the boat," which he said was an attack on immigrants. He practically leaped across the table in anger. Who knew? So this article and podcast resonated with me. Here is an interesting excerpt:

 

An anecdote from the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign: 

Ahead of the Iowa caucus... there was a kind of staff uprising there over all sorts of different issuese. And the uprising ended up being squashed by other workers. And partly because the workers had a union. The people leading the uprising had to get a majority vote; they didn’t have a majority. The majority of the workers in Iowa said: No, our purpose here is to win the Iowa caucuses. Like, the future of the world depends on this. What are you doing? And, also, by the way, this job ends — we know when this job ends. After the caucus. And so why are you going to throw away the chance to change the future of the world over the next several weeks of working conditions?

And so when Bernie Sanders got wind of this uprising, which was not the first of the uprisings, he relayed to his leadership staff, he said, “Stop hiring activists.”

NR: It’s so funny.

RG: And that’s from Bernie Sanders. And he said: Just hire people that want to do the job. We pay well. We treat people well. It’s a good cause. Get people who want to do the job. Stop hiring activists.

 Here is the podcast followed by Grim's long article.

The Implosion of Progressive Organizing

Play • 38 min - with a transcript:
https://theintercept.com/2022/06/14/deconstructed-podcast-progressive-organizing-callout-culture/

In the Biden era, progressive groups in Washington have increasingly found themselves paralyzed by internal tumult at the very moment when their efforts are needed to push the more ambitious elements of the president’s agenda through Congress. Behind the scenes, the leaders of these groups express frustration with the organizational culture wrought by their younger employees and fear of becoming embroiled in a “callout” scandal. Ryan Grim talks with The Intercept’s Nausicaa Renner about his new story on the subject.

An interesting story on The Sunrise movement and I get the point about lobbying for what is the possible - but also don't see a point when the possible is severly limited to moving deck chairs on the Titanic - ie - witness the glorious new gun legislation.

a progressive congressional staffer, who said: “I’ve noticed a real erosion of the number of groups who are effective at leveraging progressive power in Congress. Some of that is these groups have these organizational culture things that are affecting them. Because of the organizational culture of some of the real movement groups that have lots of chapters, what they’re lobbying on isn’t relevant to the actual fights in Congress. Some of these groups are in Overton mode when we have a trifecta.” And then they go on to pull out Sunrise, which is doing a Green New Deal pledge. And the aid says: The climate bill is still on the table. What are you doing? You should be lobbying around that, basically.

Ryan Grim of The Intercept takes a deep dive into issues that have arisen as a result of covid and the George Floyd protests, which occurred concurrently. It's the kind of journalism, even if you don't agree, that we should support: https://join.theintercept.com/donate/now

 

 Here is the very long article with more details:

 

 

 

 

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture/

Changes coming to working UFTers, Noon Rally Today, June 16, for Retirees and Supporters - Broadway btw. Murray St. & Park Pl. in front of City Hall Park

Look beyond retirees for coming changes to healthcare for working UFT members:

City Employee Health Plan Could Switch to Lower-Cost Company Under New Proposal - New York Focus - see below for article -- https://www.nysfocus.com/2022/06/15/city-cost-cutting-health-plan/

Greetings,

We really hope you can attend a very important Press Conference and Rally happening this Thursday, June 16th at 12noon.  The larger the crowd, the stronger our message will be.  It is being organized by CROC (Cross-union Retirees Organizing Comm) of which Retiree Advocate is a member.

We will present an Open Letter to Mayor Adams signed by City Council and State Assembly members, telling the Mayor to allow all NYC Municipal Retirees to maintain our traditional Medicare and Medicare supplement. Some of the elected officials who signed the letter will speak at this event.  

Despite the fact that  we have won all the lawsuits, Mayor Adams is proceeding with a legal appeal to switch 250,000  municipal retirees' Medicare benefits to an inferior  privatized Medicare  Advantage Plan.

We will continue to fight and make it clear that we do not want the Mayor to put our health and well-being in jeopardy by taking away the benefits we were promised as city employees.

WHY: Tell Mayor Adams to Stop the Switch to Medicare Advantage

DATE: Thursday June 16th 12 noon

PLACE: Broadway btw. Murray St. & Park Pl. in front of City Hall Park

CROSS-UNION RETIREES ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Open Letter to Mayor Eric Adams Regarding Municipal Retirees’ Healthcare Coverage

We are calling on Mayor Eric Adams to cancel the proposed Medicare Advantage Plus plan and continue to support the current Medicare/Senior Care health insurance coverage for municipal retirees.

As elected officials, as public servants, as fellow New Yorkers, we share your concern about the relentless rise in health costs. It is both an individual burden and a millstone for the city.

But we will not solve the city’s problem by slashing access to care for older New Yorkers or by privatizing public goods. For New York City to shift municipal retirees from public Medicare insurance to a private, for-profit Medicare Advantage Plus plan makes no economic sense and is bad public policy.

We estimate that the new Medicare Advantage Plus plan will spend $3,400 less caring for each person than is now being spent through Medicare and Senior Care. The City’s retirees deserve better than this cut-rate health care.

Furthermore, the new plan is inequitable. The current Medicare plan is available to all. Under the new plan, higher income retirees will be able to opt out, pay the $2,300 annual premium for the new Senior Care, and stay on Medicare. Those with lower incomes, most particularly retirees who are women and those who are black and brown, will have to accept this inferior private plan.

People will die so that the City can save money short-term, so for-profit insurers like Empire can enjoy a windfall, and so leaders of “non-profits” can award themselves exorbitant salaries.

Those who have served New York City deserve better. Thanks to an influx of federal money, the City does not have to eliminate its support for its retirees’ care. There is no excuse for this attack on the wellbeing of retirees.

The City can find other ways to save money on health care. A number of them, including self-insurance by the City for coverage of its current employees, were identified in the 2018 agreement between the City and the Municipal Labor Committee and could save even more for the City than this damaging move.

Instead of going backwards to privatize retiree health care, the City should continue to support Senior Care as the Medicare supplement so its retirees can remain on public Medicare, which works for all of them.

crocnyc22@gmail.com

 https://www.nysfocus.com/2022/06/15/city-cost-cutting-health-plan/

City Employee Health Plan Could Switch to Lower-Cost Company Under New Proposal

Sam Mellins / June 15, 2022

Hundreds of thousands of city workers and their dependents could have their healthcare shifted to a cheaper plan by 2024, documents show.

This article was published in partnership with THE CITY.

New York City is seeking to replace the main health insurance plan that it provides to its employees with a new, lower-cost option, documents obtained by New York Focus reveal. The shift is currently only a possibility under consideration, but if it goes through, roughly 750,000 employees, retirees and dependents will have their current insurance switched to an as-yet undetermined plan.

One goal of the potential replacement is to cut costs “by at least 10%” without compromising the quality of care or forcing city workers to pay more out of pocket, the documents say.

The plan that currently covers most city employees and their dependents, GHI Emblem Health, began covering municipal workers under the administration of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in the 1940s.

On Thursday, the city’s Office of Labor Relations will begin accepting submissions from health insurance companies outlining plans to replace GHI EmblemHealth. The “target effective date” of a new plan is Jan. 1, 2024.

The Municipal Labor Committee, a group representing most of the city’s local government unions, is supporting the move. In an email to union leaders reviewed by New York Focus, Ellen Medwid, executive secretary of the Municipal Labor Committee, said that the city’s request for information from insurance companies “will allow both the MLC and the City to become better educated as to possibilities to ensure quality care at a hopefully reduced cost.”

In the email, Medwid noted that the request for information “does not obligate any action” by the city or the unions, which could choose to simply continue with GHI EmblemHealth if they decide none of the proposals would be an improvement.

Medwid did not respond to a request for comment from New York Focus.

According to the documents, the city is seeking to “redesign” the plan to “provide a state of the art, cost-effective, member-focused program.” GHI Emblem health currently provides premium-free coverage for most public employees, younger retirees, and their dependents, with a zero dollar deductible and a yearly out-of-pocket maximum of $4,550 for in-network care for one individual.

Some health care experts doubt that cutting costs for the city by a tenth without raising costs for workers, while preserving the plan’s quality, would be possible. 

“They’re clearly trying to cut the benefits, or the value of the health care benefits,” said Naomi Zewde, professor of health policy and management at the City University of New York. “People should stay aware of what might happen.” 

How the switch would affect workers largely depends on the details of a potential future plan. “I’m not sure if we can tell from this document what the risks might be to enrollees,” said David Meyers, a professor of public health at Brown. “It just depends on how they all come together in a new benefit package.”

The switch would also affect at least some retired city workers. Retirees who are younger than 65 and therefore not yet eligible for Medicare are generally still covered by GHI EmblemHealth. 

It’s not immediately clear whether the proposed plan redesign would affect retirees over 65, most of whom are covered through a different but related plan called Senior Care. 

“On the face of it it looks like they’re two separate plans,” said John Murphy, the former executive director of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, the city’s largest pension fund. 

But Murphy added that the proposed switch could affect retirees covered by Senior Care “depending upon how they have them interconnected.”

For over a year, as part of a deal with the MLC tied to pay raises, the city has been attempting to save millions by switching roughly 250,000 retired employees from their current Medicare plans with free supplemental coverage to privately run “Medicare Advantage” plans that retirees say could cost more and cover less care. That initiative has been on ice since March, when a State Supreme Court judge ruled that city law barred the Adams administration from charging retirees for the coverage that they currently get for free.

A spokesperson for the city Office of Labor Relations did not respond to inquiries on whether Senior Care enrollees would be affected by the shift or to other questions about the potential change. A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams did not respond to a request for comment.

Marianne Pizzitola, president of the New York Organization of Public Service Retirees, the group that sued to stop the retiree health care switch, said that she understands the city’s desire to save money, but that it shouldn’t come at the expense of workers’ healthcare.

“You want to support them doing things that are fiscally sound,” she said. “I’m not saying that they should give me some crazy-ass Cadillac plan, but at the same time, don’t diminish what I already have.”

MulgrewCare Update: Biden Hikes Medicare Prices and Funnels Profits to Private Insurers - Connecting the dots to UFT policy

If they were actually interested in winning they wouldn't be doing things that materially make the lives of millions of seniors worse..... for the past 50 years we've seen this creeping privatization of Medicare (supported by both Dems and Rep).

.....The Lever reporter Matthew Cunningham Cook on Breaking Points. https://www.levernews.com/

Let's be clear - the UFT/AFT is tied at the hip to the center-right anti-progressive wing of the Dem Party --- they are fundamental neo-liberals who believe in the market. Cook says -- maybe private insurers can do a better job of keeping costs down. Maybe they think grandma was going to the doctor too often and private insurers help solve that problem.

Of course. Impose an extra barrier between patient and doctor. 

Note: You will not be reading this story in the mainstream media which is why you should support independent media like The Lever. https://www.levernews.com/

Krystal Ball asks The Lever reporter Matthew Cunningham Cook why the move to MedAdv from Medicare. He responds that the idea of Medicare was to get private insurance out of the way between patient and doctor and MedAdv goal is to bring private insurers back as an intermediary. 

In the midst of all this you see an 8.5% increase in payments to privatized insurance. Doctors can barely make ends meet due to Medicare payments.

If you think that wasn't the real cost saving reasons for MulgrewCare, you need to buy another bridge. 

He also gets into the FDA approval of the Alzeimer's drug over the recommendations of a panel -- you think some level of corruption? That was the ostensible reason for the $20 a month increase. But when the approval was withdrawn, the 20 bucks remained. A 14.5% increase -- another Putin inflation?

 

Krystal asks WHY raise the premium for seniors with midterms approaching.
Cook: I often say the Democrats have a kink for losing.

He goes further by ointing to the very people in the Dem Party who make these decisions always flip back and forth between public and private. They are there to help the private industry make money so they will be hired when the Dems lose.

 

Progressives are a bigger threat than the Republican right.

WTF: With mid-term elections coming, Biden raises Medicare premiums by $20 a month - which will cost me and my wife an extra $500 a year.  And also hands private insurance companies an 8% raise. Tell me Democrats don't want to lose. Actually, since they are incompetent at governing, maybe that's the goal. Lose the midterms so badly, Biden can then claim nothing gets done due to Republican opposition. That way they can remain a permanent minority party, but still keep control of the infrastructure. That's their definition of winning -- what they get personally.

It explains how much a threat to them the Bernie wing of the party is -- that threatens their lucrative deals if they lose control of the party.

Top Biden Admin officials are more interested in their next job

Cook says they are thinking of how they can get a bigger pool at their house.

The Breaking Points story and video affirms my understanding of the reason Mulgrew and the UFT/Unity machine support privatized Medicare Advantage over the public traditional Medicare. It explains the seeming illogic behind funneling money to private insurance companies.

But it doesn't explain: What Mulgrew and the UFT are getting out of supporting private insurgence. 

Maybe it's time to start asking those questions.

Biden HIKES Medicare Prices, Insurers Reap Profits | Breaking Points

https://youtu.be/Q8L2zBCbmCY

 

   

Krystal talks with The Lever journalist Matthew Cunningham Cook about the Biden administration's Medicare price hike that will boost the profits of private insurers To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and Spotify Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61... 

The Cheat Goes On - UFT Democracy/Election Outrages - D 75 Teachers Classified as Functional and buried by retiree vote

1. The UFT has not established bylaws, in violation of the LMRDA:
   
   The federal regulations set forth in Title II (29 U.S.C. 431) Section 201. (a) of the LMRDA state, “Every labor organization shall adopt a constitution and bylaws and shall file a copy thereof with the Secretary [of the U. S. Department of Labor] ...” According to the U. S. Department of Labor, the UFT does not have any bylaws filed, violating federal labor law in this way.
   
   According to an e-mail sent by UFT Secretary/UFT Staff Director/Unity caucus candidate LeRoy Barr to a UFC candidate on March 7, “There is no similar election guide for officer elections. Officers elections are referenced in the constitution, chapter leader elections are not. The [2015 Chapter Election Guide and By-Laws] bylaws clarify the chapter leader elections.”....

By all accounts, the UFT is in violation of the provisions regulating establishing and filing bylaws as set forth in the LMRDA..... Election Violations by Unity/UFT -

There are 19 functional Ex Bd seats up for grabs in UFT elections  and the retiree functional chapter overwhelms the division and guarantees Unity will win them.

 

Where does the rule live that decides a that an elementary D75 teacher is not elementary school but rather functional? The same for middle and high school teachers? D75 functional was decided many years ago, probably by exec bd. But let's dig down and find out and make the case for changes. Use our winning Ex Bd people to force Unity to justify this decision.

And guess what? Go find the illusive bylaws for the UFT.  The ruling is not codified in any bylaws. And it’s supposed to be. Thus there is a case for moving the D 75 people into one of the teaching divisions.

United for Change raised this issue in the 70 page complaint submitted to the UFT on June 6. (UFT Elections 2022: United for Change Files 71 pages of Election Violations by Unity/UFT - Select Morsels).

 

In retrospect we should have emphasized this point in greater detail.

Key takeaway: 

D 75 teachers don't get to vote in the actual divisions where they teach - the divisions where retirees don't get to vote. Thus, their votes are almost irrelevant when buried in the functional division because they -and other functional units get buried by the overwhelming retiree vote.

So let's think about the numbers in the recent election and if D 75 teacher votes were counted in the divisions. Were there enough for United for Change to win the middle schools and get closer in the elementary schools? I can't say but United for Change has a lot of people.

We were affected by this rule in that at the last minute, we had to pull one of our key elementary school EB candidates who was D. 75 and move him to functional EB where we didn't have a chance. We also almost lost our Elem VP officer who was also D 75 but one on appeal on a technicality.

 

So, as we were preparing our complaint -- we began to ask ourselves WHY? Where did this decision to make D 75 functional and not divisional, a clear advantage to Unity, get made?

When the oppo was buried when Unity got 85% of the vote it didn't seem to make sense to bring all this up. But once they slipped into the 60s and the oppo reached a third, the potential to actually win seats in not retiree divisions becomes possible. It D 75 was moved to divisions

 

After note:

Much thanks to Christina Gavin for waking us all up to the shady processes that we have taken for granted for decades -- it takes a new set of eyes. During the election, Christina argued hard for UFC to play more attention to D. 75 but some of us argued that since they were functional and buried by the retiree vote, it would not be a fruitful use of time -- but she raised our attention to the D 75 issue. She went against the grain of the experienced people and was right on many issues. I wanted to be on the UFT election committee to be more aggressive and not play the "we are all pals" game. I could have been tougher. Christina pushed we old experienced hands. I wish she was around from the very beginning of the election process - we could have raised many issues back in the fall before the election even began. She woke many of us up.

 

Upcoming: Delving into other issues of how Unity cheats -- why are all functional chapters buried in the same division as retirees? They should be separated out into their own division as their overwhelming vote makes the 19 functional Ex Bd seats impossible for the oppo to win.

Rally June 16 noon: Tell Mayor Adams to Stop the Switch to Medicare Advantage - Rally Also June 15 at 4:30 PM

THE NYC ORGANIZATION OF PUBLIC SERVICE RETIREES

(the organization that brought the lawsuit against the City to fight the radical change to force us into a privatized Medicare Plan)

 

WILL BE HOLDING A RALLY

At Foley Square in Manhattan at 4:30 pm

Wednesday, JUNE 15th

 

The President, Marianne Pizzitola and

Secretary, Michelle Robbins

Will be there in person (as retirees live all over the USA)

 

Retirees will be wearing Blue shirts in solidarity to the mission

 

DC37 will be holding a rally at 5 pm at the same location to demand a fair wage contract.   But if they resort to what they did the last time in negotiations,  retirees will lose more protection.  We want to tell them not to sell off Retiree Health Benefits for their own  bargaining benefits!

 

We will be there to remind them WE were in their union  and had their jobs, and they should be protecting retirees, seniors, and the disabled and not sell off benefits we earned and paid for while we were working.  We are disabled 9/11 responders, seniors 70-100 years old and the infirm, who cannot come to a rally.   We need to protect them!

###

 

 

Marianne Pizzitola

President

NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees

 

And

 

FDNY EMS Retirees Association

 

631-793-9715

 

 

Tell Mayor Adams to Stop the Switch to Medicare Advantage 

Come to our Press Conference and Rally 

Thurs - June 16th - 12 noon

 

Broadway btw. Murray St. & Park Pl. in front of City Hall Park

We will present a Letter to Mayor Adams signed by City Council and State Assembly members, telling the Mayor to allow all NYC Municipal Retirees to maintain their traditional Medicare and Medicare supplement. Some of the electeds who have signed the letter will be speaking including: Assembly members Robert Carroll, Joanne Simons, Harvey Epstein Yuh-Line Niou;  Council members Christopher Marte, Alexa Aviles, Carlina Rivera and a representative from Jumaane Williams.

Despite the fact that we have won all of our lawsuits, Mayor Adams is proceeding with a legal appeal to change our healthcare into a totally privatized Medicare Advantage Plan. We will not allow the Mayor to put our health and well- being in jeopardy by taking away the benefits we were promised as City Employees.

Hope you can make it.

RSVP at crocnyc22@gmail.com

Share widely with your networks and we hope to see you there.

CROC- Cross-union Retirees Organizing Committee

 

 

 

 

UFT Elections 2022: United for Change Files 71 pages of Election Violations by Unity/UFT - Select Morsels

We never delved deeply enough into the Unity vote suppression -- from rejecting electronic voting to the large number of people who never got a ballot and the limited time frame for replacements. Untity figured that if someone were asking for a replacement, it must be a UFC supporter as we were the ones rounding people up. Here is a doozie:

1. The UFT’s internal Election Committee is not impartial and presents significant conflicts of interest:
   

   
   For the 2022 UFT election, the UFT election committee was composed of the Election Committee Chair, an Election Committee Secretary, and thirteen (13) Committee members. The Election Committee Chair and 62% or eight (8) of the thirteen (13) Committee members were Unity caucus candidates; the Election Committee Secretary was also a member of the Unity caucus. The UFT’s General Counsel also attended the meetings to offer legal rulings.
   
   Election Committee meetings started at 4:30 pm, which made it difficult for any Committee members who are in-service full-time at schools to attend. The only Committee members who are in-service full-time at schools were candidates for and representatives of the United for Change coalition slate.
   
   The Election Committee Chair participates in UFT Election Committee meetings while working as a paid employee of the UFT. The eight (8) Committee members who are Unity caucus candidates participate in UFT Election Committee meetings as representatives of the Unity caucus while working as paid employees of the UFT, thereby violating the federal regulations set forth in bullet point #7 under the heading Requirements in “Chapter 5: Candidates” of the U. S. Department of Labor's publication Conducting Union Officer Elections, which state, "Union/employer funds and resources of any type may not be used to support the candidacy of any person in a union officer election...”. 

The Election Committee Chair works in the same building [UFT Headquarters at 52 Broadway] in which these meetings are held; as the eight (8) Unity caucus representative members work as UFT Representatives, they have increased flexibility to be at the UFT Headquarters building relative to the in-service teacher United for Change representative members, thereby facilitating the Unity caucus representative members’ attendance at such meetings.

There is grave concern that the composition of the UFT’s internal Election Committee, the actions of the eight (8) Committee members who are Unity caucus candidates, and the fact that the General Counsel, the Election Committee Chair, and the eight (8) Committee members who are Unity caucus candidates are all employed by the UFT, violates Title IV (29 U.S.C. 481) Section 401 (c) of the LMRDA, which states, “Adequate safeguards to insure a fair election shall be provided...” 

-- Excerpt from Election complaints.

Thursday, June 9, 2022,

 

Monday I sent the document to UFT Election Chair (and Manhattan borough rep) Carl Cambria, UFT Secretary (and Unity Caucus head) Leroy Barr and UFT lawyer Beth Norton. Cambria and Barr are Unity Caucus members and were candidates on the Unity slate in the election. Yet they are doing an "impartial" investigation?

I believe they have 30 days to issue their results, at which point we move on to the AFT and after that to the Department of Labor. Some are marginal but I agreed with throwing in the kitchen sink.

We had to get this in before the 30 day time limit since the elections ended was up.

I've been one of the 5 UFC people on the election committee and have faced the frustrations of serving there -- But I learned a lot about the process and if I ever did it again I would be much more aggressive and also proactive after learning up close as to how Unity operates. I could even see a boycott of a bogus election committee - like who gives a shit if we draw first or last for placement in the NY Teacher? Or order on the ballot? But we did make some moves to get info and raise issues. Our call for district reports was accepted though our call for school reports on voting per centages was declined.

 

I have gotten way behind the issues - the June 6 Ex Bd and the June 8 DA, plus all kinds of general issues.

[Monday was out 51st Anniversary - a stay at home for the first time in decades because my wife has a broken bone in her foot but still managed to make a delicious surf and turf. Then Wednesday I attended the funeral/memorial at Greenwood Cemetery for a 107 year old remarkable woman. And I was added to the cast at the Rockaway Theatre Company for the upcoming Kiss Me Kate. So excuse the delay for this important piece of info.]

Check out James Eterno's and Nick Bacon's reports:

ICEUFT Blog

LIVE BLOGGING FROM JUNE DA (Largely Unedited) -

 

New Action – UFT Do delegates on phones deserve rights? – Notes on the June, 2022 UFT Delegate Assembly -

There is too much in the report to put into one blog post -- and James will be also posting on the ICE blog.

 

Let's face it, they stuffed every mailbox in the city and lost many votes from even last time. Their margin came with the retiree and elementary votes. 

Do I believe UFC would have won if Unity had followed the rules? Maybe not, though with Retirees I think they had a lot of acccess that we did not through their Unity controlled outposts around the nation and the way they ran remote retiree chapter meetings. This is not part of the complaint but probably should have been. We got 30% of the retiree vote - imagine if we hit 50% - a new ballgame. I may not argue we would have gotten 50% if we could rebut the Unity sales pitch -- but maybe 40% and that would have given us over 10K retiree votes and pushed us over the 35% mark of total votes. 

Will the threat of going to Dept of Labor force reforms? Probably not, but by publicizing among UFT members, it will raise the idea that Unity is an entity of lack of democracy.

So why are we documenting these violations? There may come a day where the oppo is close enough to win and the Unity machine will actually attempt to steal the election and this document is a cease and desist order and also blueprint for the future where my hope is the oppo lays all this out up front before the election begins.

My contributions to the document, put together by Christina Gavin, a key player in the election, whose  activism around this issue had made her a particular target of Unity - an that  itself has generated a bunch of complaints on her part), has been a focus on the way Unity set up the election committee (8 Unity, 5 UFT, with a Unity Caucus chair), a tainted complaint process where Unity is judge and jury, and the actions of Unity district reps. I reported on Christina's actions, which have broken new ground in the oppo election response. Christina Vs The Unity Caucus Machine - At May 23 UFT Ex Bd.  Kudos to her.

 

Here are a few select items -- more to come soon.

• UFT employees/Unity caucus candidates used personal Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts for electioneering on the part of the Unity caucus in violation of UFT election rules set in writing via e-mail by UFT employee Manhattan Borough Representative/UFT Election Chair/Unity caucus candidate, Carl Cambria, on January 31, 2022:
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  Members of the United for Change coalition were denied access to school mailboxes at thirty-nine (39) schools to distribute campaign literature in violation of the LMRDA, Chancellor’s Regulations D-130 § I. B. 4. a., the Policy for Union Visitor Posting of Election Fliers published in Principal’s Digest on December 7, 2021, and the January 18, 2001 Memorandum from the Office of Labor Relations & Collective Bargaining:

• Postal mail:

The UFT has violated this federal requirement by repeatedly providing inaccurate information to UFC candidates regarding distributing campaign literature by postal mail from UFC’s initial inquiry made on February 7 over the course of fifteen (15) e-mails, one (1) meeting, and one (1) letter until the final message providing accurate information was received on March 16, which was

fifty-six (56) days after the election began on January 19. For a period of thirty-seven (37) days, the UFT adamantly provided inaccurate information to UFC candidates regarding the distribution of campaign literature by postal mail.

E-mail:

The UFT has violated this federal requirement by not notifying candidates, caucuses, or coalitions of the procedures for distributing campaign literature by sending multiple e-mails until a March 29 meeting, which was seventy (70) days after the election began on January 19. 

UFT employee Manhattan Borough Representative/UFT Election Chair/Unity caucus candidate Carl Cambria and UFT General Counsel Beth Norton insisted that attendees were required to inform the UFT by the end of the following business day, March 30, if they wished to opt into the paid multiple e-mail plan, in violation of the federal regulations set forth in bullet point #4 under the heading Common Pitfalls in “Chapter 6: Distributing Campaign Literature” of the U. S. Department of Labor's publication Conducting Union Officer Elections, which indicate that a union can commit an election violation by “imposing a deadline for making requests to mail literature and, as a result, refusing to comply with an otherwise reasonable request.”

During their March 29 meeting, Mr. Cambria and Ms. Norton adamantly stated that whether or not any candidates opted into the paid multiple e-mail plan, the only thing that the UFT would send out on candidates’ behalf would be a link to a PDF that the candidates had prepared. United for Change had requested to send out full-color formatted e-mail messages with graphics; the UFT refused this reasonable request in violation of the federal regulations set forth in bullet point #6 under the heading Requirements in “Chapter 6: Distributing Campaign Literature” of the U. S. Department of Labor's publication Conducting Union Officer Elections, which state, “A union may not regulate the contents of campaign literature it is asked to distribute ... The union may not censor campaign literature in any way.”

See additional details in Appendix H.

• The UFT inappropriately allocated campaign advertising space in The New York Teacher union newspaper in violation of the terms of the election as voted upon and accepted by the UFT Election Committee:

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  In the April edition of The New York Teacher, the UFT inappropriately allocated a two (2) page spread to the six (6) WE C U candidates, in violation of the terms of the election as established in January, which state, “Slates- Each caucus gets two facing pages....” and “Independent candidate ads are 4.5 inches wide by 5.5 inches tall.”
  
  Additionally, the UFT inappropriately placed the ad for the six (6) WE C U candidates in the final position, in violation of the terms of the election as established in February whereby the UFT Election Committee had agreed that the UFC slate’s ad would appear last.
  
  
  
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