James Eterno on the Contract: NEW UFT CONTRACT: RETRO DELAYED = RETRO DENIED WHILE ABSENT TEACHER RESERVES HAVE TENURE WEAKENED

Cross-posted from the Independent Community of Educators (ICE) blog.

http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/new-contract-retro-delayed-retro-denied.html

NEW UFT CONTRACT: RETRO DELAYED = RETRO DENIED WHILE ABSENT TEACHER RESERVES HAVE TENURE WEAKENED
Four members of the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE) sat through a propaganda love fest this afternoon as UFT Chief Financial Officer Dave Hickey, Staff Director Leroy Barr and then President Michael Mulgrew explained our new contract to rousing applause from the Unity/New Action faithful on the negotiating committee. Now that the contract is done there is no need to be confidential.

I asked the President to show us a copy of the Memorandum of Agreement but there was none. However, the UFT machine is spinning faster than any Wascomat washing machine.

UFT members in the new contract will get the 4 % + 4% salary increases that other city workers unions received back in 2009 and 2010, but we won’t see the money until 2015-2020.

For the seven years from 2011 to 2018, where the UFT will set the pattern for raises that other city unions will now follow, we will be getting a total of 10% in raises for seven years plus a $1,000 signing bonus. That works out to less than 1.5% per year.

Specifically, this is how the CFO crunched the numbers:

2009-2010 = 4% raise
2010-2011 = 4% raise
2011-2012 = 0% raise but we will get a $1,000 signing bonus if we ratify the contract.
Nov 2012- April 2013 = 0% raise
May 1, 2013 = 1% raise
May 1, 2014 = 1% raise
May 1, 2015 = 1% raise
May 1, 2016 = 1% raise
May 1, 2017 = 2.5% raise
May 1, 2018 = 3.0% raise
Total: 18% (compounded it will be a little more)

For those of you expecting to go back in the fall and at least have the 4%+4% added to your pay, forget it.

The 4 % + 4% that other unions received in 2009-10 will not be added to our salary schedules until the increases kick in one year at a time starting in 2015. Here is how the 8% will be added in:

May 1, 2015 = 2%
May 1, 2016 = 2%
May 1, 2017 = 2%
May 1, 2018 = 2%

All we get added to our salaries now if we ratify is 1% for 2013 followed by 1% for 2014 and the $1,000 bonus.

The 8% won’t be added to our salary schedule fully until 2018 and the retroactive money the city owes us since 2009 won’t be coming soon either. Here is the schedule for the retroactive payments:

October 1, 2015- 12.5% lump sum
October 1, 2016 – Nothing
October 1, 2017 – 12.5% lump sum
October 1, 2018 – 25% lump sum
October 1, 2019 – 25% lump sum
October 1, 2020 – 25% lump sum

We will not be made “whole” for Bloomberg denying us the raises that other city unions got 5 years ago until 2020.

Retro delayed is really Retro denied!

Anyone who Retires Before July 1, 2015 Wins Big
The winners in this deal are anyone who retired from 2009 through now and anyone else who retires between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015. They will get all of their retro pay calculated and get it at once. People who already retired will have their pensions recalculated as well as receiving retro payments for the time they worked.

Anyone who retires July 1, 2015 or after will get the deferred payments the same way as active personnel and will be waiting until 2020 to be made “whole”.

Only people who resigned or were terminated won’t get retro.

Top salary now $100,049 will crawl up to $119,565 by May of 2018.

President Mulgrew arrived at around 5:20 pm after hanging around at the mayor’s press conference and here are some of the other details he let out.

Some union had to settle first and it was us.

Here is a breakdown of some of the non-economic issues.

Evaluations:
We will go down from being rated on 22 Danielson components to 8. (No word on the number of observations.) Artifacts are out.

On Measures of Students Learning if we want, we will only be graded based on students we teach.

Paperwork:
The DOE and UFT agreed to set up (yet another) Committee on excessive paperwork. This one will be half UFT and half DOE with a mediator. Cases can also be taken to arbitration.

Extended Time
No additional time added to the day. The extended time, faculty, grade/department conferences, open school night time will be reconfigured. We will work two extra open school evenings which will go from 2.5 to 3 hours.

There will be a default schedule on how to use the extended time each week and preapproved School Based Options.

Multi session, District 75 and 79 schools will keep their current time schedules.

Curriculum
Each core subject will have a curriculum that we must use. Unit plans will be no longer than a page.

Merit Pay
There will be a career ladder i.e. merit pay.
Ambassador teachers will earn $7,500 more to visit other schools.
Model teachers will earn $7,500 more to be model teachers at their own schools.
Master teachers will earn $20,000 to help other teachers.

PROSE Innovative Schools
Schools can opt in with a 65% vote to cancel major parts of the contract. This can be up to 200 schools.

ATRs
Absent Teacher Reserves must show up for interviews. ATRs will sent to vacancies in schools. There will be no termination for time in the ATR pool but there is an offer of a severance package.

If two principals document unprofessional behavior, the documentation can be used for a special 3020A process just for ATRS. This will not be for performance and it will be a one day hearing which could lead to termination.

Schools will be forgiven for ATR salaries.

Bonus
$5,000 will go to teachers who go to a hard to staff school.

Healthcare
There is a healthcare cost savings plan from the Municipal Labor Committee that must be approved. (We don’t know how the cost savings will be achieved but we will keep our basic plans for free.)

Validators
For teachers rated ineffective, the validators sent in the second year to validate an ineffective rating will now be educators: teachers and administrators.

Where is the Memorandum of Agreement?
I asked the president when we would be seeing the full Memorandum of Agreement in writing. He said he didn’t know but Staff Director Leroy Barr said it would be out soon. Mulgrew asked for a motion to recommend the contract for approval. I abstained as I would never vote on something I haven’t seen. The Unity faithful followed their caucus obligatons and all voted in the affirmative while the New Action people went along with Unity too. The other MORE members abstained silently during the vote but I screamed out for my abstention to be counted.

VERY BRIEF ANALYSIS
I leave it to you to decide what we should do. I tried to keep the adjectives to a minimum in this piece and just report what was said.

We couldn’t lose on the 4% + 4% because of pattern bargaining (one city union settles on a percentage salary increase and all the unions follow that pattern) but allowing the city stretch it out so that money we were owed since 2009 won’t be fully paid back until 2020 really lets the city off the hook.

As for setting the pattern of 10% over 7 years, this is an abysmally low pattern to establish (we did better monetarily under the anti union Mayors Bloomberg and Guilliani). I can understand why other labor unions in the city are angry with Mulgrew, particularly when it is considered how much surplus revenue the city has. We should have been able to achieve non monetary gains for loaning the city our money and setting a very low pattern but instead we surrendered as usual.

The devil will be in the details on the ATR agreement but I see this contract as a real missed opportunity. Here’s hoping the members will ignore the Unity spin cycle and see through it.