The UNITY caucus = Colonial Britain
Archives For Unity
The following will be part of a series of posts based on our summer series forum that was presented on Thursday 7/25/2013. The purpose was to share the various perspectives on how we, an opposition caucus, views Unity, the dominant party in power of the UFT? As potential partner, foe or something in between? There were four presentations, this is an introduction for the next three to be posted in the upcoming days. These views do not necessarily represent those of MORE, rather they are part of the diverse viewpoints that represent our membership.
[UPDATED WITH AUDIO]
By Norm Scott
Publisher of Ed Notes Online
Member of ICE, GEM, MORE
Diane Ravitch’s recent post, My Friend Randi Weingarten garnered over 250 comments, mostly critical of Randi and some of Diane for posting this (I think it was a good thing she did),
Diane wrote:
It serves no purpose for those of us opposed to teacher-bashing and corporate reform to fight among ourselves. We must stand together so that we will one day prevail over those who want to destroy public education and the teaching profession. We can’t win if we are divided. I will do nothing to help those who pursue a strategy of divide and conquer. They want us to fight among ourselves. I won’t help them.
Peter Goodman – Ed in the Apple blog – Unity Caucus shill – retired District 22 Rep.
Unfortunately the union movement has spent too much time fighting internally rather than concentrating on their enemies…
For the past 45 years this has been the constant Unity line used to kill internal criticism and brand it anti-union.
There have been internal debates for years in ICE, GEM and MORE on this issue. How far does an opposition caucus go in criticizing the leadership? Does it risk blow back — feeding into a sense of anti-unionism, especially from the newer generation of teachers who often enter with an anti-union bias? How do you try to compete for power in the UFT without being critical? How does MORE manage to counter the so-far successful propaganda campaign by Unity over the last 2 decades that it is the mayors (Giuliani and Bloomberg) who are the problem, not the people running our union?
Julie Cavanagh sent me this question:
How do we connect our members to our union and help them to understand its importance and galvanize them to get involved– how do we overcome the disenfranchisement and disconnectedness and instead convince people our union is actually a force for good and justice locally, nationally, and globally?
We basically put forth the concept Julie is talking about in our film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. But I have trouble saying what Julie is talking about the union without qualifying it. How do we do the above with a union leadership that at best can be considered ineffective and at worst collusive with our enemies? I won’t get into the whys and wherefores of motivation or reasons for their actions this time but maybe some answers will emerge later today.
Other questions that have come up:
What strategies and tactics should an opposition caucus use in relating to the union leadership? Should the opposition work with the leadership? If so, when, how and under what terms? If it’s going to be critical, what kind of tone should be maintained? If the decision is to criticize/attack the leadership, then how should it be done, while making it clear to all that The Union is always to be supported [unless it goes so far off the tracks, this is impossible morally and politically]? In other words, how can the leadership be separated from the Union in the eyes of the rank and file? And should it?
Given the power balances in the UFT do you attempt to lobby the leadership towards better policies? That’s pretty much what New Action does. They have no grassroots and they play the role of a loyal opposition — not even an opposition given that they could not win one position in an election without Unity support.
Some in MORE think that the leadership can be pressured, but instead of playing the inside New Action game, by organizing enough rank and file and the leadership will be forced to respond.
Some think the UFT leadership cannot really be pressured to change direction, given their history of capitulation and even when they look like they are doing something right, that is only on the surface. In fact they coopt the language of the critics (what they say) but don’t actually do anything very much different from what they’ve been doing (what they do).
Peter Lamphere will touch on many of these issues in his presentation.
- what are the interests of the union leadership?
- why do they act the way they do?
- to what extent are the susceptible to pressure?
- to what extent can we work with them?
- comparing the UFT leadership to other union leaderships.
I hear all the time, even from newbies: if only we had Al Shanker instead of Randi/Mulgrew we would have a militant fighting union. As a 43 year activist I don’t buy that line and in fact believe that there is a direct line ideologically from Shanker, through Sandy Feldman through Randi and Mulgrew.
Ira Goldfine, my colleague from the 70s and a founder of ICE in 2003 will do a presentation going back to the late 60s through the 90s pre-Randi to show this connection. That Randi did not in fact take the union in another direction. Shanker started the give back ball rolling as far back as 1972, the last time we got a good contract.
The UFT/AFT/Unity leadership has made it easy to be critical based on their support for so much of ed deform.
Vera Pavone will present a comprehensive list focusing on the UFT capitulations over the years.
UFT Friend or Foe is too simplistic a description for what we are doing today. I’m guessing there won’t be a lot to disagree on. We hope to come out of today with a clearer sense of how MORE can navigate this territory and refine the way it addresses the issue of when to we support/when to we criticize/when do we attack.
This is the start of a conversation and if there is interest we will do an informal follow-up.
Below find a list of items that the UFT/AFT leadership has collaborated on:
- supporting the teacher accountability ed deform mantra – the evaluation mess
- signing on to “we must get rid of bad teachers” as a solution
- variations of merit pay schemes
- mayoral control
- common core
- charters and co-locations
- rating and grading schools and generation of phony statistics on graduation rates, dropouts, all resulting in….
- Closing schools (which the UFT supported through the end of 2009 and still supports to some extent), destroying neighborhood schools, dezoning, eliminating comprehensive HS and availability of electives for the vast majority of HS students. Forcing children to travel longer distances.
- tepid defense of reducing class size, which ed deformers disparage as a solution
- the contract and agreements in 2005 that coupled school closings with the burgeoning population of ATRs who started off as in-house subs and ended up as the wandering unwanted. Leading to the forcing out of thousands of older and experienced teachers.
- charter schools, co-location (the union had 2 co-located charters), unequal treatment from DOE. The growing corps of temporary, non-unionized at-will teachers.
- the growing segregation of the student body—the wanted vs. the unwanted
- denial of tenure to newer teachers (year after year extensions, discontinues from principals with a grudge — no rights for non-tenured and increasingly restrictive rights for tenured teachers who are now facing even the end of that protection
- a grievance procedure in the toilet
- multi pension tiers
By Kit Wainer- Teacher & UFT Chapter Leader at Leon M. Goldstein High School
2007 TJC/ICE UFT Presidential Candidate
2013 MORE UFT Executive Board Candidate
The results of the 2013 UFT election revealed a startling fact: Just 18% of eligible active employees (20,728 of 115,050) decided to vote. On June 19th the UFT Delegate Assembly will entertain a motion to charge the election committee with the task of analyzing the problem of low voter turnout in the 2013 union elections. While it is easy to focus on the organizational minutiae of whether the election committee is the correct body to consider this question, or whether it is representative enough, it is important to keep an eye on the broader issue of the origins of low voter participation and its significance for the union as a whole. The declining participation is both a product and a symptom of our union’s weakness. More importantly, it poses an existential threat to the future of the UFT.
Low voter turnout is part of a long-term trend of increasing voter apathy over the last several union elections. It is also part of a larger and equally disturbing trend within the UFT as a whole. When I was first elected chapter leader in 1996 several of the oppositional high school chapter leaders would sit together at high school meetings and complain about the low attendance rates at monthly divisional meetings. At that time there were slightly more than 200 high schools but rarely would more than 40 chapter leaders show up at the monthly meetings. Over the past two years the number of high schools has increased to more than 400 and the turnout of chapter leaders at monthly meetings has declined to fewer than 20. At some meetings participation has been in the single digits if we count only those chapter leaders without part-time staff positions.
Although attendance at Delegate Assemblies has been steady over the past 20 years, it has been very low. The UFT’s meeting hall is large enough to seat no more than 30% of the delegates and there is only slight spillover into the secondary meeting room upstairs. Consider that a delegate’s only job is to show up at the monthly meetings. A delegate who is not coming to DAs is, therefore, not performing any aspect of his/her responsibilities. The fact that thousands of delegates have behaved the same way over decades indicates that this isn’t a problem of individual behavior. It is a larger trend. Inactive delegates are replaced by other inactive delegates.
The success of the June 12 rally is a hopeful sign. However, past membership turnout at union rallies has been uneven, at best. In spring 2005 the UFT did manage to pull off several successful protest events as a build-up to what should have been an activist contract fight. However, more recent results have been disappointing. On December 1, 2011, in the wake of the Occupy protests, the UFT participated in a city-wide union protest. Michael Mulgrew advertised the December 1 march as the one we were “building” — as opposed to other Occupy-inspired actions we were only “supporting.” Then-staff member Janella Hinds came to a high school meeting in November to impress upon us the importance of the march. She argued that if we show up with only 1000 members it will be a show of weakness. I marched in the UFT contingent that day along with the 300-400 other UFT members who heeded the President’s rallying cry.
Analyzing the causes of membership apathy requires some educated speculation. We have no polling data to indicate why people don’t vote or don’t show up. We know that we are in a larger historic climate of low levels of activism, at least compared to the decades of labor upsurges of the 1930s and 1940s, or compared to the growth of social movements in the 1950s and 1960s. However, that is only part of the explanation. Our members vote in U.S. elections at a much higher rate than they vote in UFT elections, despite the fact that going to the polls in November requires more effort than filling out and returning a mail ballot. (And despite the fact that, in my view, decisions of President Mulgrew have a greater impact on the daily lives of UFT members than do decisions of President Obama).
The low membership participation is an ironic — and dangerous — consequence of the UFT’s failures to defend the basic rights of our members. The impact of the 2005 contract was disastrous. Our work day was lengthened. We lost the right to grieve letters in the file or transfer to other schools and the ATR crisis was born. Now we will be evaluated based on standardized test scores. And at 3020-a hearings the burden of proof will now be on us to convince a hearing officer that we should not be fired. The problem is not simply that we have lost ground. It is that the UFT leaders have spun each giveback as a victory and argued that we are better off than we used to be. Members may not analyze the causes of our decline but when bureaucrats tell them that steps backward are really strides forward, when they tell them things that contradict what they see and feel at work every day, members simply tune the union out. UFT members have become acclimated to bureaucratic double-speak. We hear it from supervisors, from the Department of Education, from politicians. We have learned over the years to mentally change the channel. When our union representatives speak the same bureaucratic language we respond the same way.
Members respond to the union’s failures — and its refusal to admit failure — by tuning the entire union out. They don’t show up at meetings or rallies and they don’t vote. Ironically, this strengthens Unity’s hand as it frees them of the obligation of formulating coherent arguments that can convince independent delegates that they are right. Delegate Assemblies attract mostly Mulgrew’s Unity Caucus members and have become pro-leadership rallies in which the President speaks for most of the 2 hours and there is little room for serious conversation or debate. Nor does the leadership have to win over activist, critically-minded voters in order to prevail in union elections. Ironically, membership inactivity feeds the very forces that lead to more discouragement and more inaction. And an increasingly isolated union leadership is weaker, more prone to make concessions, and more likely to alienate members. The cycle is tragic but not illogical. Members who are disenchanted with the union’s trajectory have thus far chosen apathy rather than than the project of building an alternative vision. Frustrating as it is, this decision makes sense for members who have no live experience of any other version of unionism. So many members infer from Unity’s failures that unions in general are bankrupt, or at least irrelevant.
The Unity leadership has turned off the membership and that may soon pose a serious crisis for the UFT as a whole. As some MORE members have pointed out, by acquiescing to the new evaluation procedure, Mulgrew has negotiated contractual concessions without anything in return — not even a contract. Invariably, the state and the city will want more in the very near future and the UFT leaders no longer have the ability (assuming they had the desire) to mobilize the membership to defend what rights we still have. Worse still, the 18% turnout among active members in the 2013 UFT election is a signal that the membership’s lack of investment in the UFT has now reached crisis proportions. This opens the possibility of a direct challenge to the very existence of the UFT. In the national climate of declining union membership and state legislatures moving to eliminate collective bargaining in historic union strongholds such as Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, to ignore the possibility of an assault on our collective bargaining rights would be foolish. An attack from a Tea-Party dominated legislature is unlikely in blue New York. However, a decertification drive from “reform” groups such as Educators For Excellence or Children First is a possibility. Can we be certain that the 82% of active members who don’t care who our union president is will vote to continue paying $100 per month in union dues if given the choice not to? By failing to mobilize our members for the kind of fight we should be waging in this political climate the Mulgrew regime is endangering the very union it leads. That is nothing short of grotesque dereliction of duty.
The good news is that our union’s decline is not inevitable. We can turn things around. The Chicago Teachers Union, which launched a successful strike in September 2012, has shown us that an activist, mobilized membership can fight back and win. The corporate reformers are still on the move in Chicago, but the strike checked at least part of their agenda and provided a living example that participating and organizing are worth the effort. We need that kind of change in mentality in New York.
The Unity leadership seems impervious to the lessons of our defeats in New York or the successes in Chicago. But the Movement of Rank and File Educators is committed to a unionism that is based on mobilized members in alliance with a broader social movement to save our schools from destructive reforms. We believe that a revitalized UFT can energize our members and fend off even Bloomberg-style attacks. We urge you to get involved. The future of your union may depend on it.
In this UFT election there is finally an ALTERNATIVE to the union leadership (UNITY) that has dominated UFT politics for decades. Finally there is an opening to begin to fight for what our students, parents, and we as teachers deserve, a union that fights for the schools our children deserve!
A Unity Chapter Leader, the caucus of current President Michael Mulgrew, sent an email out to the UFT members at his school. Our own Fred Arcoleo answered by making a case for MORE and explaining why we are running against the current leadership as a positive alternative.
The lines in bold were sent by the Unity chapter leader, the follow-up for each is MORE’s response to each point by Mr. Arcoleo:
In the Last Three Years a lot of UFT Victories were achieved because of Michael Mulgrew
Fighting endlessly for a Fair Contract with no give backs and without giving up the Contract we have to get a new Contract (Taylor Law allows us work under an expired contract until we get a new Contract)
UNITY allowed our contract to expire in 2009 without ANY mobilization of the membership and have allowed us to work without a new contract for FOUR YEARS! They have refused countless times to mobilize the membership to fight for a new contract, claiming they couldn’t work with Bloomberg, but it was UNITY who 1) REFUSED to criticize Bloomberg when he CHANGED THE LAW to run for a third term and REFUSED to endorse his opponent William Thompson in the 2009 election (that Bloomberg didn’t win by much). Furthermore, UNITY REFUSES to publicly attack the Taylor Law. It is the Taylor Law that expressly forbids job actions (or even threats of job actions). If UNITY would have led a campaign against the Taylor Law, in effect since 1967, all these years—especially in light of a 2011 decision by the International Labor Organization (ILO) that says the Taylor Law violates international labor law—we then could threaten labor actions like strikes when under attack, like the Chicago teachers did. Their strike won them numerous improvements for teachers and students and served notice that the teachers were a force to be reckoned with.
Ask yourself this: Have we ever been mobilized to fight for a new contract? Have we ever even been asked what we would want in a new contract? Think of it this way: our working conditions and wages have not improved since at least 2006 when the last contract was approved. Most of us weren’t even teaching then! And in that same time, our budget has been cut almost 20%. That is the contract situation.
Preserving the Collective Bargaining Agreement by working strategically to fight DOE using Legal means and winning those battles
Again, UNITY Caucus routinely defends the Taylor Law, a law that has made virtually all job actions illegal. They claim that the Taylor Law protects our (expired) contract, but in practice, it has led time and time again to NYC public employees working FOR YEARS without a new contract.
Consider this startling fact: there are NO public employees working under a contract right now in NYC—that’s 152 bargaining units and 300,000 workers!!!
Listen to The Wall Street Journal: “The lack of contracts presents Mr. Bloomberg’s successor with a set of thorny problems: Roughly 300,000 public workers and their labor leaders seeking raises and benefit sweeteners, as the city faces an estimated $4 billion budget deficit in 2014…. The major Democratic hopefuls have all said they would make deals only in the city’s best interest.”
Where to you think that will realistically leave us? By not mobilizing UFT members BEFORE our contract expired to FIGHT collectively—85,000 strong—for what we need, UNITY has betrayed us, built dangerous illusions, and fattened us up for slaughter with the new mayor.
Chicago CORE teachers, on the other hand, built strong, active chapters that educated and involved their members in decision-making. It was exciting! They did not rely primarily on legal means, but on the strength of the masses of teachers, mobilizing in the streets, and in the end, refusing to work until (some of) their and their students’ needs were met. They have a contract now, and defeated Mayor Emanuel on many of his most stubborn plans, by FIGHTING BACK for the good of our students we love so much and our careers.
Worked endlessly for a fair State Mandated Evaluation, and refused to settle one that would worsen our working conditions
UNITY has REFUSED to oppose the new evaluation system that will make it much easier to fire teachers and will effectively end tenure protections. The new system is the opposite of fair: it will allow administrators to rate teachers from a complex list in 4 domains, 22 categories, and 76 elements, making it far easier than before to point to alleged “deficiencies” in teachers who make too much money, or who they don’t like, or who challenge educational policies or conditions. The DOE plan to conduct 10 unannounced observations a year will make it impossible to have thoughtful pre- and post-observation conferences (as UNITY claims). Furthermore, teachers who don’t follow this litany of qualities will now be able to be fired much more easily. The founder of this rubric herself, Charlotte Danielson, has denounced the plan as UNFAIR (!) and contrary to her intentions in developing it. She recognizes that her instructional aid is being transformed into an instrument for the wielding of power.
UNITY’s opportunistic appeal to and defense of Governor Cuomo over Bloomberg is just Republican/Democratic party politics: it was Democrat Cuomo who took away the $250 million in funds from NYC schools this past January, punishing NYC students and teachers for the DOE’s failing to make a deal. Cuomo and Bloomberg’s aims are much more similar than different. UNITY would have us choose the lesser of two evils.
By signing onto this evaluation plan, UNITY is actually playing into the DOE’s plans to drastically increase teachers’ workloads, pressure teachers to enforce a more narrow, lock-step curriculum, and force out thousands of experienced (i.e., higher-paid) teachers, as well as teachers who speak up about deplorable conditions in the schools. All without doing a single thing to IMPROVE CONDITIONS that would make learning and teaching easier. Who is criticizing them for this? Not UNITY. They’re making a deal and going along with the plan.
The new evaluation system will ABSOLUTELY worsen teacher working conditions in NYC. Tying teacher evaluation to student test scores will create much more stress for our students and as well as ourselves; divide teachers against students and pit teachers against each other; and essentially blame students and teachers for the inadequate education system both parties are forced to endure. Not to mention the fact that it’s scientifically unsound on its face. This kind of draconian pedagogy will not lead to improved learning.
Bloomberg himself has said he wants to use the new evaluation system to get rid of half the teaching force. How could that be fair? How could that not worsen conditions for the rest of us?
Won the PERB Case ensuring that Danielson is not included in Teachers files until an agreement is reached regarding the Evaluation
By making such a big deal now about the Danielson rubric not being used in formal evaluations “yet,” UNITY is distracting us from the fact that they have been instrumental in ALLOWING the framework to become the standard measurement tool in NYC by refusing to oppose it in the first place. It’s insulting to our intelligence, not to mention demoralizing, when we know that the day an agreement is reached (with UNITY’s blessing), Danielson will be the standard tool. Principals are already training us in its implementation!
In fact, instead of denouncing it, UNITY has organized its own UFT TRAININGS in the Danielson framework (!), sealing its legitimization. Again, Danielson herself has said on multiple occasions that the DOE is distorting the reasons she created the rubric in the first place and does not support it.
Passed a Resolution to end Mayoral Dictatorship
UNITY has consistently FAILED to oppose Mayoral Control, going back to when it was first proposed in 2002. (I was one of the many chapter leaders and delegates who fought UNITY to oppose it.) The UFT could have denounced it and mobilized its full 185,000 membership to expose its dictatorial nature then. UNITY could have united teachers with the thousands of parents and others who also actively opposed Mayoral Control, which wiped out whatever voice parents had in their children’s education. Instead, UNITY ALLOWED Bloomberg to impose it without any fight whatsoever. Since then, UNITY has over and over REFUSED to oppose it or lead any campaign against it.
Notice the nuance: they call it Mayoral “Dictatorship.” JUST LAST MONTH UNITY released a major governance report that explicitly SUPPORTS Mayoral Control, arguing only for a few minor adjustments that give no direct voice to over a million parents, teachers, or students. Lastly, you can’t oppose major government policies with a resolution! You need to educate the members and mobilize them to take action in their/our interest, and mobilize the public to understand the important issues at stake.
MORE, on the other hand, unequivocally opposes Mayoral Control as inherently dictatorial and anti-student and is fighting RIGHT NOW in many public forums and inside parent groups to mobilize people to condemn it (we have been active organizers at Bloomberg’s rubber stamp Panel for Educational Policy [PEP] hearings, while UNITY has been NOWHERE TO BE FOUND). We fight for a united movement of teachers, parents, and students to have a direct voice in making decisions about education.
Won Arbitration stopping the DOE from shutting down 24 schools in 2012
UNITY has consistently FAILED TO MOBILIZE its membership to oppose rampant and frankly racist school closings, most taking place in the poorest neighborhoods with the largest percentages of Black and Latino students (some of the City’s best school buildings then taken over or co-located with middle class students and charter schools). Again, UNITY is ALMOST NEVER at the PEP hearings, leaving teachers, parents, and students from closing schools to fend for themselves. MORE, on the other hand, has been active in the Occupy the DOE movement and a consistent presence at PEP hearings, denouncing these draconian anti-student, anti-community attacks. We are (see above) absolutely opposed to Mayoral Control, advocating a direct voice for parents, teachers, and students in their education.
Stopped the city from Laying off Teachers
Though it’s true that NYC currently has no layoffs, thousands of ATRs wallow in limbo without permanent positions because UNITY refuses to make a cause célèbre out of the DOE’s deliberate attempts to isolate these mostly more experienced (and higher paid) teachers. One look at them and you can see they are disproportionately older (a discrimination suit BEGGING for action, but UNITY will not touch it) with a disproportionate percentage of them black and latino.
Thousands of these ATRs have essentially been forced out of their career or have become so cynical they have lost interest in the profession they dedicated their lives to.
Saved ATR’s from layoffs
UNITY CREATED THE ATR CRISIS by negotiating an end to seniority transfers in 2005. It used to be that more senior teachers were guaranteed positions when they were excessed from their schools. Now, when a veteran teacher is excessed, they are dumped into an ATR pool and must try to find a job on their own. Because they earn a higher salary, principals are choosing cheaper teachers and reducing the most experienced to function as day-to-day subs. Many of them languish for years before they quit or are (for now) lucky enough to be able to retire.
In addition, UNITY agreed last year in a side agreement never discussed with the membership that ATRs now rotate to a DIFFERENT SCHOOL EVERY WEEK, virtually ensuring that they can’t prove themselves with a particular school and earn a permanent position, as sometimes happened in the past. Uprooted and marginalized, ATRs are more disillusioned and bitter than ever.
Won the SESSIS Arbitration which will result is paying Special Education Teachers back for money owed due to SESSIS
UNITY has ALLOWED SESSIS to create mountains of more paperwork and stress, primarily for guidance counselors and special education teachers, with NO pay increase or added staff. Instead of sounding the alarm and FIGHTING for added staff or a contract that guarantees rights for teachers and counselors (like Chicago CORE teachers did), UNITY merely went to court to get back pay for teachers and counselors who have ALREADY sacrificed hours and hours of extra time and stress to conform to these new regulations.
Who is exposing this attack on teachers and counselors? Who is fighting for the needs of students? It’s always less money and more work, and UNITY REFUSING to fight back. As usual too, it’ll be students who suffer most.This court case is actually allowing principals to pressure counselors and teachers into working overtime to complete their work or face sanctions and letters in the file for not doing their jobs!
MORE wants to take the lead of the Chicago CORE teachers, who actually fought for and won a SIGNIFICANT INCREASE in guidance counselors and support staff (as well as a significant raise and many other concessions that are improving the lives of students and teachers).
Restored Teachers Choice
Ridiculous! For years teachers received $250 a year for teachers’ choice. Then, because UNITY FAILED to win a contract for its members that included teachers’ choice, the DOE canceled it altogether. This year we got only $45. To call this a victory is to turn reality upside down and insult the intelligence of our members. Our members spend hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars. Many educators, especially those in Elementary schools, are routinely evaluated on their class room environment and bulletin boards, thus they feel mandated to spend this type of money. Teachers have had to make up for budget short falls due to years of budget cuts, by bringing in; markers, pens, pencils, copy paper, posters, tissues, books, calculators, staples, toilet paper, just to name a few. Let’s remember this is on top of NO Contract!
Shut Down the Rubber Room
There continue to be rubber rooms scattered throughout the city where hundreds of teachers wallow for months and years, not allowed to return to teaching and often held without charges or any way to defend their reputations. UNITY allows this to continue while opportunistically and traitorously claiming victory.
Please see the story of MORE’s Francesco Portelos which proves that rubber rooms are still open http://protectportelos.org
The new evaluation process WILL perhaps eliminate rubber rooms, but with a bitter irony: it will be much easier—for the first time in many years—to fire teachers altogether.
Para’s (sic) no longer have to clock in when they arrive to work
Working conditions for paraprofessionals have consistently deteriorated over the years due to our lack of a contract. Paras have suffered disproportionately from working without a new contract because their salaries and benefits were lower to begin with. The fact that non-UFT paras’ hours are being cut across the City this year has meant an increased workload for educational paras, without a peep from UNITY.
Passed a Resolution to support ATR’s in low needed (sic) areas to get certified in high needed areas so they can get back into the classroom
As noted above, UNITY has allowed thousands of ATRs to roam the city week by week, functioning as day-to-day substitutes. Many have thus become bitter, cynical, and isolated from their colleagues, giving up on a lifelong vocation of helping young people. Since the DOE has been targeting more experienced teachers (which, again, would make a POWERFUL CAMPAIGN AGAINST AGE DISCRIMINATION), many are counting the days until retirement. This plays beautifully into the DOE’s plans to get rid of more experienced teachers.
MORE wants to fight to reinstate all ATRs in permanent positions, expand the teaching pool citywide, and expose Bloomberg’s campaign against experienced teachers. We additionally want to force the City to hire more black and latino teachers, whose numbers have been dwindling for the last ten years for many reasons.
I will only mention one of the countless other attacks UNITY has either acquiesced to or even orchestrated: the major cut in pensions (you could call it Tier “IV½”) for new teachers UNITY agreed to in 2009—again, without any member input whatsoever—in return for two school days off in September that UNITY had themselves negotiated away in 2006 (how’s that for turning defeat into “victory”?). That further opened the door for Tier VI in 2012 for the newest teachers, which is even worse! Observe:
“Tier (“IV½”) Teacher”…………………………….“Tier VI Teacher”
34 year service……………………………………… 34 year service
Age Retires 57………………………………………. Age Retires 57
Final 3-year FAS $100,000……………… Final 5 year FAS $100,000
Pension = $66,000………………………………. Pension = $38,430
(http://chaz11.blogspot.com/2012/03/newbie-teacher-and-tier-vi-why-teaching.html . See also http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-fool-no-joke-tier-4-pension-last.html for a comparison between Tier IV and Tier VI. It’ll open your eyes, whether you’re new or a veteran.)
That’s what I mean by steady erosion of conditions. And I’ll bet many of you didn’t even know this. That’s because UNITY doesn’t advertise these “victories.”
A QUICK SUMMARY OF MORE:
MORE represents an alternative to a passive UFT membership.
MORE represents an end to “let’s make a deal” politics that deceptively label defeats as “victories.” There is no substitute for educating and mobilizing teachers to fight for what we need. In fact, it’s exciting to take some control of our destinies for once!
MORE represents activating UFT members.
MORE represents educating UFT members about the issues that are threatening teachers and students.
MORE represents fighting for what we need as teachers, students, and parents.
A teachers’ union should not be about “let’s make a deal.” It should be about fighting for what we need, for ourselves, and mostly for our students, who are suffering the most in any of these attacks.
Much of the 12/12/12 Delegate Assembly was dedicated to teacher evaluations. This isn’t surprising, as the Unity crew knew that MORE caucus was showing up with petitions and a resolution in hand. For the better part of an hour, delegates were told how UFT President Michael Mulgrew is fighting this evaluation battle for us and how Unity is giving its all to protect teachers from the evil machinations of Mayor Bloomberg. You’d never know from all this that it was the UFT leadership, headed by Mulgrew, who agreed to the new teacher evaluations in the first place–without input from the members.
MORE showed up with a single purpose and a single request: that the membership be allowed to vote on any new evaluation agreement made outside of a contract agreement. It seemed a pretty reasonable request; teachers — NOT union leaders — are the ones who will be most severely affected by any new evaluation scheme. We are the ones who will be evaluated on what Randi Weingarten herself recently called “junk science”, or value-added scores. We are the ones who will lose our jobs if this junk science determines that we are ineffective based on a mathematical formula that attempts to reduce our students to a set of variables. It only makes sense that we–the teachers–should get a say in any new evaluation method.
So that, of course, is not what happened.
MORE’s resolution merely called for a democratic referendum:
“That the UFT conduct a broad and democratic discussion about the new evaluation system which would include that: our union immediately poll the membership with regard to the new measures and host forums at chapter, borough and city-wide levels where members can discuss this new system”
“That if a new evaluation system is negotiated with the city outside of a new contract, the UFT hold a membership-wide referendum on whether to accept the system, conducted in the same manner as contract approval votes.”
Kit Wainer, one of MORE’s High School Executive Board candidates, spoke passionately on behalf of teachers. He pointed out that we are constantly having policies imposed on us by the DOE, that we are demoralized, and that we must have a voice in matters that so deeply and personally concern us. Wainer also said nearly one thousand educators signed the petition calling for a rank and file member vote on any new agreement and over a dozen school chapters endorsed it.
It was an elegant plea, but Unity was prepared. They presented UFT Staff Director and Executive Board member Leroy Barr to speak against a democratic vote among the members. He said the Delegate Assembly is a duly elected body that represents the wishes of its members. Barr claimed that the DA holds the authority to make decisions for its members, and that anyone who questions that authority (presumably MORE and its supporters) ought to be questioned themselves.
The vote was 70% to 30% against the MORE resolution. Against a democratic vote. Against the right of teachers to have a say in a matter that fundamentally threatens our professional lives.
Overall, this was a loss for union democracy. Nevertheless, there are some bright spots. In a delegate assembly overwhelmingly dominated by Unity, MORE gathered a significant percentage of the votes on this resolution. Many delegates spoke to MORE members following the meeting. Momentum may be swinging in favor of a more democratic union. Perhaps most significantly, the UFT is feeling the heat and knows it is in a fight for the hearts of its members.
You can help. Let your chapter leader, delegate, and Mulgrew himself know that you demand a say in your professional future. Tell them that you don’t want fundamental changes to our current contract and evaluation system without a referendum. Tell your colleagues and ask them to spread the word.
And join MORE–for a more democratic union.
Morecaucusnyc.org
Facebook.com/morecaucusnyc
Twitter.com/morecuacusnyc
