Friday, August 19, 2016

CAN THE UFT BE REPAIRED?

Here at the ICEUFT blog, we have a diverse readership which covers the political spectrum. It still surprises me somewhat that there are conservative teachers who comment here as the right considers public education and teacher unions to be a major adversary and my perspective is obviously pro-union.

In spite of our rank and file political differences, we still need to be unified where we can be because the forces that want to destroy public education and unions are working diligently to privatize the system thereby finishing us off. We have been on defense for years. I truly believe that only by standing together as a militant union in pursuit of common goals can we save our profession. Unfortunately, we are stuck with an unaccountable UFT leadership that controls our union so getting members to support a militant union is an uphill struggle. It still has to be done somehow.

Why is it so necessary? Union power comes from a fully engaged rank and file willing to do what it takes to advance our interests. Leaders without a membership that is willing and able to stand up for ourselves are toothless. Democracy is an essential ingredient in strengthening the unions by empowering members to feel their voice matters. Alternet's Simon Greer and Andy Potter describe it this way:

Inside their unions, working people build a place where the left and the right, the radical and reactionary and the liberal and conservative elements of our society coexist, and out of them a new politics can be born. It is a common good politics that contends we are better together and at our best when family, work and place are at the center of our shared commitments. This comes out of the real-life union experience of deeply held values passed on from generation to generation

It is in unions that a communal spirit wins out over a narrow self-interest. In unions, working people hone a sense of obligation to one another. In unions, working people build a fierce loyalty to a vision of a shared economy that honors and respects them, and where labor is treated with dignity.

This is why unions are public enemy number one to the modern conservative movement. As Corey Robin states in his thoughtful piece on conservatism:

Modern American conservatism, I've long held, has succeeded. It essentially destroyed the labor movement, which was, in conservatism's most recent incarnation in response to the New Deal, its original enemy.

We will not be holding the so called liberal Democrats blameless for union weakness either. This quote from Blue Collar Buzz in Labor Press sums it up nicely:

“Stockholm Syndrome” is the very disturbing psychological phenomenon where victims come to bond with their abusers over time — and according to Andrew Tillett-Saks, an organizer with Unite Here Local 217, it’s a great way to describe Labor’s dysfunctional relationship with Democratic Party elites who continually come up short for American working men and women.

Unions are in trouble but are we done? Let's take as a given that both major political parties are not our friends and the minor parties are not electable. However, bringing the camaraderie back that Greer and Potter talked about is certainly possible as the Verizon strike showed in the private sector earlier this year.

Can union solidarity and militancy be attained at the United Federation of Teachers?

We are a huge local with almost 200,000 members and a leadership that realistically cannot be defeated in an election so has virtually no accountability. The leadership from Unity Caucus requires a loyalty oath from party members to support whatever leadership tells them to support. Unity relies on a top-down system of governance. They keep their members in line by rewarding complete loyalty with union jobs and free trips to conventions. They tell dissenters to leave the caucus. Unity seems more interested in protecting the institution of the union rather than the members they serve.

From reports that come in here, it seems the UFT at the chapter level in most schools is as defeated as Robin says unions are and there is a sense among teachers that there is nothing we can do about contract violations at the school level. Therefore, the UFT is irrelevant to most members unless they want dental forms or something like that. Hiding out until retirement seems to be the best way for teachers to survive in most schools. There certainly are active chapters out there but it seems they are the exception.

Why pay union dues then if it is that hopeless?

That is a question most teachers probably grapple with in New York City and is seen on some of the comments on this blog. Some teachers wanted us to lose the Friedrichs Supreme Court case so they would not have to pay union dues. I was not one of those people as our lame union is better than one that is dead. We survived Friedrichs but we are still too weak to matter much as our defeats on the evaluation systems and the substandard 2014 contract show. We have to rebuild the union from the ground up. We need to reboot at the chapter level, district level and the divisional level (high school, middle school elementary, non-teachers). 

Can the union be repaired so that it can actually mobilize its members under its current structure where the Unity monopoly can't be broken (winning 7 High School Executive Board seats on a 102 seat Executive Board doesn't count)? I have been attempting to work within the system with opposition groups for two decades, including serving for a decade on the UFT Executive Board, and have had only limited success. 

I would certainly appreciate it if readers (left, center, right, apolitical) would help out by telling us how you think the UFT can be mended or what we should do if our union is too bureaucratic to ever be a militant force in the real world.

42 comments:

Anonymous said...

No.

Anonymous said...

The reason I wanted to see Frederichs win was that, without the guaranteed flow of cash to its coffers, the UFT would not take its members for granted. They might actually start working for us, instead of continuing along as the self- serving bureaucracy that currently exists.

Anonymous said...

Been teaching in NYC over 20 years and yes, I am a republican. This fact has nothing to interfere with the fact that I am a proud union member. The UFT needs to do 2 things right away: 1) District reps need revert back to being ELECTED by the rank and file. 2) The UFT needs to stop spending tons of money of lavish trips/meals/conventions and use that money to hire more lawyers to defend and fight for it's members. A lot of teachers don't realize it but there is an open war against us being spearheaded by the DOE.

Anonymous said...

The younger teachers are more apt to voice their dissent, once they realize they are being shafted. Many think of their union dues as payment for dental, optical and even healthcare. The younger teachers, if they want this to be their career, will demand change. Older teachers are just waiting to retire and get out ASAP. What is the UFT doing with all that money?

Anonymous said...

Great article James. To be honest we need someone like you to fight to defend our rights but we all know that ship has sailed. Other than that I believe we have little hope. Unity leadership is horrible and I can't see them losing much power in the coming decades. The only solution for us is to keep our heads down and do what we are told. Maybe Mulgrew will have a change of heart but don't count on it.

Anonymous said...

That's not happening. The DOE has collapsed. If this were are real business, not being run by the city, the CEO would have been fired and the business would be bankrupt.

Anonymous said...

That's a big part of the problem, it is being run on a business model. Even with all the technology we now have it has worsened all its problems. Schools aren't businesses.

ed notes online said...

From almost the day I began teaching in 1967 - my first 2 years we went on strike - the DOE was dysfunctional. I went through the corrupt school board stuff which actually worked better than mayoral control which the UFT supports.
The UFT has always been a dictatorship with a Unity Caucus loyalty oath. Yes district reps should be elected but even when they were from the late 60s-2002, every single DR except Bruce Markens and his successor in the Manhattan HS (the major area of insurrection to Unity) was Unity. They had all sorts of rules to keep people from challenging them and in only some rare instances did we get a real election -- so while that would be a big reform now it still takes us back to where we were in 2002.
Sorry, there was never a golden age of teaching in the NYC school system or a UFT that was not top-down.

ed notes online said...

Oh and I forgot that in 1975 they laid off 15000 people even though we went on strike. We lost 2 of our preps a week and services were cut. We didn't recover for a decade - and we had salary freezes. And there were many schools with discipline out of control. There were as many awful principals and as one of the few teachers who spoke out I saw most of my colleagues as afraid to speak out as they are now. Instead of one Farina or Klein each of the 32 districts had their own little dictator supt. and a buddy system for principals, many of them incompetent and politically connected. So what has really changed?
I get that ed deform has made many things worse let's not act like things were hunky dory.
People like James and Jeff Kaufman and others were as vulnerable as anyone but didn't stay silent or anonymous and challenged the union and the DOE and put a big target on their backs.

Anonymous said...

Norm
It is the progressives who stand up and are willing to take a hit. The Republican Trump supporters are always anonymous and in hiding which makes sense. They are cowards and need a big bad Trump to stand up for them. They are the future brown shirts.

Anonymous said...

Wow anon 10:33 think you should have your morning coffee before replying. Name calling us not the answer but we should listen to some of the things the Ed notes guy said even though he blamed me for students bad behavior. It's not the teachers fault Ed that students curse them out!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
James Eterno said...

Norm, I started in the eighties. Conditions are much worse now. The 2005 contract saw to that. Basic things that would have been worked out twenty years ago now end with teachers left hung out to dry. If you had a bad principal, you could transfer if you had a few years in the system. Now you are stuck unless you know someone.

Anonymous said...

The uft can't be repaired and they are our only line of defense. God help us all!!!!

Anonymous said...

By the way what's going to happen to us when people like James and others arn't around anymore to attempt to hold the uft accountable. These new teachers are really u know what! Fucked!

Anonymous said...

The 2014 contract is also a very good example of how little the union works for us. We were told this is the best we can d o (getting the 4 and 4 in pieces and the retro in pieces spread out over years). The same members who voted for the contract THINK we are getting a lump sum payment this fall. We have a union leader (perhaps the only one in the country), who does not truly believe in retroactive pay.

Harris L said...

Another fine column, James.

But this: "Inside their unions, working people build a place where the left and the right, the radical and reactionary and the liberal and conservative elements of our society coexist, and out of them a new politics can be born."

All a fine aspiration but I don't think that this has ever, except for the early days of the CIO, been the actual, lived reality of American labor unionism. Which leads us back to the perennial and, ultimately, unanswerable question: why did the American labor movement never develop a sustained progressive, much less radical, voice or presence.

As to your larger question: I don't know that the UFT can ever be challenged internally even if teachers "wake up and unite" tomorrow. The UNITY caucus and the DA control, absolutely, the outcome of any officer election and the rules for chapter leader races. You and the other leaders of the movement for union democracy fight the good fight but at the first sign that our forces are gaining on UNITY two things will happen: the DA will increase the share of the retiree vote that counts in officer elections and will revise chapter leader/executive board selection rules.

My feeling is that UNITY will collapse, who knows when, of its own hubris--after sixty years of monopoly control with no effective oversight about how contracts are let, the pension fund is managed and the books are kept--only if a scandal of sufficient magnitude erupts to draw the attention of a Preet Bharara or of the membership, itself.

But we need to be in a position to inherit the mess when it inevitably occurs by building opposition leadership and educating the membership--a long slog if ever there was one.

Solidarity. Forever.

Anonymous said...

Most teachers (77%) see no problem, what so ever, with the UFT. That's the problem. Until you awaken that 77%, nothing will change. I don't care anymore - the ship is sinking, I'm tired of screaming 'it's sinking' and I'm getting off.

anonymous said...

The young teachers will wake up when the contract expires in June 2018 and when it is time for the 25% retro payment in October 2018 we will hear that the City is broke and Mulgrew/UFT will say it's okay. Retro isn't a God given right. This was already planned. Why did Mulgrew allow the City to get away with no retro in October 2016? The City has a surplus so they could give everyone the measily 12 1/2% like we received in October 2015. Retro

Anonymous said...

Remember these are lump sum longevity bonus payments. These are not retro payments because you have to be on the payroll at the payoff date to receive it. If these were retro payments there would have been a legal obligation to pay and we would not talking about this anymore. Our union leader advocates more for the city than for the members.

James Eterno said...

The Triborough Amendment to the Taylor Law would save us in 2018 if the city tries to weasel out of paying us. The lump sum payments will have to be made as they are in the contract. I would not argue that the UFT will agree that there is some kind of city emergency to say the city does not have to make the payments. The problem in 2018 is that by then possibly another union will have settled on a pattern for the next round of raises and we will be stuck with it. That pattern will be very low as the city will of course be crying poverty again.

James Eterno said...

Reading through the comments there seems to be a consensus that we are in bad shape but not much hope for a solution. We will keep trying but it is the people who have much more time left than me that I am concerned about.

ed notes online said...

James - you overestimate the transfer option. Principals had to give permission except in seniority transfers. But those were spiked too -- many positions were covered up and teachers had to accept one of 5 choices and if they didn't they couldn't apply for another one for 2 years.
The UFT correctly in this case claims the open market system doesn't give your principal a way to stop you from transferring.
So yes we know that things are worse in so many ways -- but since they were always getting worse since I began teaching the best I can say it is a spiral of worsism -- what I see here is people pining for the good old days - there were never good old days for teachers in the NYCDOE. You know in my first 2 years I was in a school where there were some bad discipline problems - before special ed even existed in the late 60s. We had some good admins who helped keep control but when I read the complaints of how much worse kids are today I have to laugh.

Anonymous said...

It's not that kids are worse today it's that you get in triouble from admins for telling a student to sit down. Telling a student to sit down may single them out and be an embarrassment. That's verbal abuse these days my old friend. Students today know they can do almost anything and get away with it. No discipline. And when you do try and discipline a student by telling them to sit down or you will call home or call the dean the teacher gets in trouble my Ed notes friend.

James Eterno said...

My point Norm is that if you had some time in you could get out with a principal from hell at the end of the year. The receiving principal could not block you on a seniority transfer. That is a fact. Many members took advantage of the seniority transfer option. Some got away from our infamous principal that way at Jamaica. Many others stuck it out and I thank them and God for that. You aren't working now Norm. Look at some of the comments on how much better it was in the 90's on a prior post. The 2005 contract changed everything for the worse. Ask anyone who was involved before and after. The current evaluation system just kept the ball heading further downward.

One more thing: How many teachers couldn't get tenure in the nineties or even early 2000s? Extensions of probation were rare. Now they are the norm. No lawyer unit at the Board of Ed either to get teachers in those days. Compared to now it was a golden age for teachers.

Anonymous said...

Well, if the UFT does indeed need some kind of repair-I would hope they contact a union repair shop to do the work.

Anonymous said...

Retirees just got a letter that they will no longer have to wait for their retro - they are getting it in a lump sum in October - the working members will continue to have to wait until 2020. This says a lot about the UFT.

James Eterno said...

I need to see that letter before commenting.

Anonymous said...

I'll have it sent to your email.

Anonymous said...

Norm,

I been teaching since 1999. When I first started teaching I was able to put my students in rows and have my own seating chart. Over the last decade I been required to have small groups and my seating chart dictated to me from administration . My seating chart is now based on data, skill sets and next steps. Where is the union??? Mulgrew NEVER talks addresses micromanaging and I rarely have a say in how to deliver instruction to students. I would support decertification of this corrupt union in a second.

Anonymous said...

I agree 100% with the previous comment. If this is true that all retirees get the remaining lump sum payments upfront then I would also support to de-certify this union. How come our union continues to screw the inservice memebers with deferred raises, lump sum payments WITHOUT INTEREST and micromanaging of class instruction. I am going to talk with all UFT members I know to DE-CERTIFY NOW.

Anonymous said...

The last two comments make a great deal of sense. Why do we have to be in a union that couldn't give a crap about us?

Anonymous said...

Just ask an ATR who was an abusive field supervisor if they would vote to de-certify. Our most vulnerable members are illegally being harassed and Mulgrew allows this to happen along with Amy Arundell . They make HUGE SALARIES while backstabbing fellow union members who are being VICTIMIZED by field supervisors. There is corruption with bloated salaries for which they do not deserve.

Anonymous said...

I'm an atr and am disgusted by my Union. I could write a book of the disrespect but no one cares. Sad working conditions for many.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the previous comment about the abusive ATR supervisors. Someone should put our union leaders in the ATR pool and have them rotate from school to school. Mulgrew, Barr and Arundell would be a good start. Then have a DOE supervisor pay a visit and write an observation on them. I bet all of them would get INEFFECTIVE.

Anonymous said...

The letter that retirees received is a letter that the two 4% retro increases will be included in the salary as if it was received in 2009 and 2010. They won't have to wait for pensions to be recalculated. Retirees after 7/1/2014 still have to wait until 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 to receive the lump sum retro just like in-service members. I wish that was true that retirees were getting all their reto in October. The recalculations of the pensions due to the contract is starting in late 2016 through 2017. If you want to see the form that retirees are receiving it can be viewed on the TRS website.

Anonymous said...

A question for anonymous that mentioned the letter sent to retirees about them getting their retro in October. Did the letter come from Mulgrew as an email because there is nothing on the Uft website about it. Can you post the letter on this site because I retired recently and didnt get the letter.

anonymous said...

As long as Mulgrew is president the UFT doesn't have a chance. He needs to go. What will he do in 2018 when they start negotiating for a new contract? If people think this contract was bad wait for the next mayor. The UFT will go for years without another contract unless they accept less than 1% a year.

Anonymous said...

Can the UFT be repaired? Of course! With the right leadership. With an inept and corrupt leader such as Michael Mulgrew, whose only interest is SELF interest, the UFT has gone from bad to worse. And as a result of his failure, the working lives of the people on the front lines, a.k.a. teachers, has been greatly diminished.
The better question is: Will the UFT be repaired? My answer is likely not. Unfortunately the membership of this union is just too apathetic and two ignorant. And I'm sure Mulgrew loves that fact.

Anonymous said...

The letter and email were sent out a month ago. My friend retired in 2015. He's hunting for it now. Once he gets it to me I'll send it to James. It comes to a substantial amount of money.

Anonymous said...

The letter that anonymous is searching for was discussed about on this site in July. People that retired after July 1, 2014 still have to wait for ther lump sum retro payments just the way in-service members have to wait. What they are doing for retirees now is that a person"s pension will be based on an FAS as if the two 4% retro raises were already given in 2009 and 2010. The monthly pension will be higher. For people that retired after 7/1/2014 ther pensions will be recalculated. This recalculation process of pensions will start in late 2016 through 2017. The DOE is supposed to send updated salary info to TRS this summer. Hopefully they did it already so new retirees will have pensions based on salaries from the contract. TRS also stated in the letter that when they calculate the pension of a new retiree that if they dont have the updated salary info the pension will be based on the old salary schedules and then it will be recalulated at a future date. If it takes 3 to 5 months to calclate the final pension amount for a new retiree how can they still base the pension on the old salary if TRS was getting the updated salary info this summer.

The UFT is allowing this to happen. By the time they recalulate the pensions of everyone that retired after 7/1/2014 how many retirees will pass away and the families dont get the retro. The City is saving a lot of money with this contract. Mulgrew knew this and he went along with it. If the UFT was upfront about it this contract wiuldn't have passed.

James Eterno said...

Thank you 2:05.