Delegates to last month’s assembly were treated to two long-winded motions (550 words in total) from the floor. 

Each of these were for unobjectionable causes (Provider Appreciation Day and Nurse Appreciation day). 

One was submitted by a member of the executive board (Tammi Miller) who has two other opportunities each month to place resolutions on the agenda. They both opted to read their motions (when a summary is acceptable) nice and sloooowwly.

Five other resolutions went unheard that day.

Both Ms. Miller and Ms. Bennet are loyal members of the UNITY caucus, the more than half-century-old organization that runs the UFT with bureaucratic hold that Stalin could admire.

Clearly, UNITY is making sure that resolutions that question its regime or its positions are not getting heard. 

(Please see JD2718’s explanation for more detailed account of what happened)

But, you ask, how can UNITY ensure that their motions are at the top of the list of motions from delegates? Isn’t the order determined by the order of submission after a link is sent out to all delegates at the same time?

Well, we don’t actually know that. The union refuses to release a list of timestamps or logs from wufoo.com (the UFT’s forms provider). UNITY has gotten extremely lucky over the past few DAs, nailing the #1 & #2 slots in April too.

Or is it luck? When the motion receipts were checked, two of the motions (Rothstein and Alicea) were not in the correct order. The leadership hurriedly revised the schedule. But then more investigation revealed that a third motion, submitted after #4 and #5, somehow made it to #3.

<See the resolution and receipts below for details>

It’s clear that the UNITY leadership is putting the motions in their order of preference for what should be heard, not in order of submission. 

Is it a coincidence that UNITY’s strange luck began after they embarrassingly lost a crucial endorsement vote for a key ally thanks to some strong arguments from dissidents? Are they afraid of losing their grip?

Clear what is happening here is a violation of the UFT’s duty of fair representation – unions have been legally responsible before when they have not allowed dissidents to speak in meetings (see LMRDA Sec. 101(a)(2), Freedom of Speech and Assembly, which says “…every member…shall have the right to…express at meetings of the union his views…subject to the organization’s established and reasonable rules pertaining to the conduct of the organization.”

By law, they have to follow their own rules.

Support the resolution below at Wednesday’s DA to encourage them to do so!

Receipts:

RESOLUTION ON SUBMISSION OF MOTIONS TO THE DELEGATE ASSEMBLY

WHEREAS, since May of 2020 resolutions to this Delegate Assembly have been submitted electronically and called on during the ten-minute motion period, supposedly in the order of submission, and

WHEREAS, the order of motions significantly affects the chances of motions reaching the floor, with only 8 out of 20 delegate motions reaching the floor in the last three months,

WHEREAS, for the May 14th, 2021 Delegate Assembly, motions were submitted at 12:02PM (#4 – Move Resolution on Medicare Advantage – Lamphere), 12:03PM (#5 – Rescind Stringer Endorsement – Rothstein), 12:05PM (#3 – Endorse Weprin – Peccarro), 12:10PM (#6 – Hybrid Voting options – Alicea), on Sunday, May 12th and

WHEREAS, these motions were  instead listed in a different order than they were submitted with, with the Weprin resolution being listed first even though it was submitted after two of the others, and

WHEREAS, the UFT leadership has refused to issue a transparent log of when motions were submitted, therefore be it resolved

RESOLVED that logs with timestamps for all motion submissions conducted since May 2020 will be compiled and released to delegates, and therefore be it further

RESOLVED that the UFT will contract with an independent accounting firm to handle submissions of motions for future Delegate Assemblies conducted under the remote rules, and this firm will distribute the link for motion submission to all delegates at noon on the Sunday before each such remote Delegate Assembly, and publish a log of submissions to all delegates.