Tuesday, October 11, 2005

WHY YOU MUST VOTE “NO” ON THE PROPOSED CONTRACT


EXTRA TIME
  • Teaching day extended Monday thru Thursday by 37½ minutes

  • Two less days of summer vacation (start date before labor day)

  • One less holiday (if you teach in Brooklyn or Queens)

GRIEVANCE RIGHTS
  • No right to grieve letters to the file: supervisors can write an unfair and inaccurate letter and it becomes part of your personnel file

  • Elimination of step ii grievances

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
  • Lunch duty, bus duty, hall duty, potty patrol

  • Additional small group instruction period

  • Possible involuntary assignment to position at principal’s discretion

SENIORITY RIGHTS
  • Seniority and SBO transfers eliminated

  • Excessing rights weakened

  • If your school closes no right to teach – you could be a sub anywhere in city

  • All transfers up to principal

HARSHER DISCIPLINARY RULES
  • Absent/late tenured pedagogues- doe can file a notice for arbitration and arbitrators can impose suspensions, fines, loss of salary steps

  • If medical reasons are given for the latenesses/absences, releases for personal medical information must be signed over to DOE

  • Full suspension without pay of tenured pedagogues if charged under criminal law or accused by special investigations of any type of sexual misconduct against any minor. Applies even for some verbal abuse.

CREATION OF LEAD TEACHER
  • Creates a new group of teachers receiving merit pay- further weakening the union. Job posting is city-wide: placement and transfer city-wide.

MEDICAL AND DRUG AND RETIREMENT BENEFITS
  • Higher deductibles and co-pays incorporated as permanent

  • No provision for funding new retirement incentive leaving members to fund their own, a de facto tier 5

SALARY INCREASES AND INFLATION
  • Current inflation rate: 4.1% (source: bureau of labor statistics, 8/05 metro NY urban consumers) 

  • Proposed annual increase for veteran teacher: 3.4%

  • Proposed annual increase for new teacher: 2.1%

  • Proposed annual increase for per session: 1.7%

DO THE MATH:
With so much additional work time it is disingenuous to call additional pay a raise

REJECT THE CONTRACT
TELL YOUR UNION THERE’S MORE THAN MONEY AT STAKE
DON’T GIVE BACK WHAT TOOK YEARS TO ACHIEVE

For More Information and to help defeat this proposal contact ICE
Independent Community of Educators
http://www.ice-uft.org. Join our mailing list and read our blog, http://iceuftblog.blogspot.com

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You have to be retarded to like this contract

Anonymous said...

These comments enlighten us to the work that lies ahead -- the importance of having a non unity contact person in every school -- the value of a serious alternative newspaper that educates about provisions in the contact and how they affect one's daily working life. Perhaps all of this started too late. The Perb report came back and everything moved quickly. Maybe we can have an ongoing chat room set up which deals with teachers problems. Maybe we can have a reporting system in which teachers tell us why they received a letter in their file. Maybe we can provide real support for teachers so that when an election or a contract comes up, they already understand the issues. Lets try to offer a real alternative to Unity. Lets build a support base based on facts. One fact is that if you vote the contract down it will not result in a strike.

Bllomberg and Klein were banking on this type of teacher -- passive, non questioning and mainly money oriented.

Yes, very disheartening indeed!.

Anonymous said...

The next step is to continue to expose the chicanary of the ledership to the membership. We need to go back to pass contracts and demonstartae how the union leadership has sold us out. The extra time in the last contract (2002) and in this new contract if it is ratified by the membership, the so called 10 extra minutes, the 371/2 minutes in reality! We have to continue to put pressure on the grievance procedure, before the contract goes into effect (if it is ratified) to demonstrate before and after effect. we need to reach more teachers, if they hear what we are saying, they will see for themselfs how the leadership is selling us out. They collaboated with Pataki in 2002 and today with Bloomberg, they are helping with his reelection. The education millionaire mayor who is reforming the school system by implementing corporate style management. What does he care for working class, black, white, latino, asian kids? We have much work ahead of us.