Sunday, December 04, 2005

Taking the Initiative in Labor Relations

If our past experience negotiating against a “formidable adversary” as our leadership calls Bloomberg and Klein produced a wholesale erosion of our basic rights as union members the interpretation stage of this new document will lead us further away from our professionalism and our right to be a positive force in the schools.

One of the most basic concepts in any negotiation is setting the parameters or playing field. Once you’ve set the boundaries for negotiation you’ve taken the upper hand. When the infamous “eight page contract” was announced early in our negotiations our leadership fought back proclaiming that our contract evolved from many years of negotiation and we were not scraping it.

Yet our leadership went ahead to fact-finding where the fact-finders set the parameters. We plunged forward and “used the fact-finding as a vehicle” despite the anti-union provisions called for.

Then came the contract with all of its provisions insuring that principals have complete discretion in most of the important issues in the school and eviscerating the grievance procedure not to miss potty patrol.

So the leadership’s public relations spin machine decides to find a myriad of ineffective ways to work around all of our givebacks.

Our leadership was out-foxed again. The DOE issued an implementation memo and set the parameters of negotiation yet again. Where is OUR implementation memo? Isn’t the contract half ours?

Our leadership, despite the years of experience in negotiation, approached and continues to accept the DOE’s lead. The DOE does and our leadership reacts.

When are we going to learn?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The truth is, when this contract expires, the UFT will be rendered completely powerless.

Right now teachers are not complying with any of the rights we have left because they are either too afraid or have no backbone. Or,since they have never seen a strong union presence in their school, they think this is the way it should be.

Violations are starting now, and come February this will all come to a head.
Randi cannot now tell the DOE to wait til September. She agreed to this, she spoke in praise of this, and told us to vote for it. What she really meant is now we have to live with it.

Anonymous said...

Why don't we take the symbolic initiative and write our own implementation memo?

We can stand up to the DOE ourselves representated by the 6 anti-Unity leaders who sit on the Executive Board.

Lets show Unity how to do it and lets show the DOE that we are strong and our numbers are growing. After all, who are they, really? A bunch of bureacratic pencil pushes who follow a short, almost bald guy with a Napolean complex who spent close to $80 million to get re-elected. And his other lacky field mouse, Klein. This is whom we are worried about?

Every day we sit back and do not take some action to further our cause is another day wasted. This contract issue is so incredibly urgent. We must get organized before the next contract. Lets stand up and take risks and speak out. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Anonymous said...

Why don't we take the symbolic initiative and write our own implementation memo?

We can stand up to the DOE ourselves representated by the 6 anti-Unity leaders who sit on the Executive Board.

Lets show Unity how to do it and lets show the DOE that we are strong and our numbers are growing. After all, who are they, really? A bunch of bureacratic pencil pushes who follow a short, almost bald guy with a Napolean complex who spent close to $80 million to get re-elected. And his other lacky field mouse, Klein. This is whom we are worried about?

Every day we sit back and do not take some action to further our cause is another day wasted. This contract issue is so incredibly urgent. We must get organized before the next contract. Lets stand up and take risks and speak out. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Anonymous said...

Why don't we take the symbolic initiative and write our own implementation memo?

We can stand up to the DOE ourselves representated by the 6 anti-Unity leaders who sit on the Executive Board.

Lets show Unity how to do it and lets show the DOE that we are strong and our numbers are growing. After all, who are they, really? A bunch of bureacratic pencil pushes who follow a short, almost bald guy with a Napolean complex who spent close to $80 million to get re-elected. And his other lacky field mouse, Klein. This is whom we are worried about?

Every day we sit back and do not take some action to further our cause is another day wasted. This contract issue is so incredibly urgent. We must get organized before the next contract. Lets stand up and take risks and speak out. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Anonymous said...

Why don't we take the symbolic initiative and write our own implementation memo?

We can stand up to the DOE ourselves representated by the 6 anti-Unity leaders who sit on the Executive Board.

Lets show Unity how to do it and lets show the DOE that we are strong and our numbers are growing. After all, who are they, really? A bunch of bureacratic pencil pushes who follow a short, almost bald guy with a Napolean complex who spent close to $80 million to get re-elected. And his other lacky field mouse, Klein. This is whom we are worried about?

Every day we sit back and do not take some action to further our cause is another day wasted. This contract issue is so incredibly urgent. We must get organized before the next contract. Lets stand up and take risks and speak out. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Anonymous said...

Why don't we take the symbolic initiative and write our own implementation memo?

We can stand up to the DOE ourselves representated by the 6 anti-Unity leaders who sit on the Executive Board.

Lets show Unity how to do it and lets show the DOE that we are strong and our numbers are growing. After all, who are they, really? A bunch of bureacratic pencil pushes who follow a short, almost bald guy with a Napolean complex who spent close to $80 million to get re-elected. And his other lacky field mouse, Klein. This is whom we are worried about?

Every day we sit back and do not take some action to further our cause is another day wasted. This contract issue is so incredibly urgent. We must get organized before the next contract. Lets stand up and take risks and speak out. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Anonymous said...

Why don't we take the symbolic initiative and write our own implementation memo?

We can stand up to the DOE ourselves representated by the 6 anti-Unity leaders who sit on the Executive Board.

Lets show Unity how to do it and lets show the DOE that we are strong and our numbers are growing. After all, who are they, really? A bunch of bureacratic pencil pushes who follow a short, almost bald guy with a Napolean complex who spent close to $80 million to get re-elected. And his other lacky field mouse, Klein. This is whom we are worried about?

Every day we sit back and do not take some action to further our cause is another day wasted. This contract issue is so incredibly urgent. We must get organized before the next contract. Lets stand up and take risks and speak out. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain!