CITY FUNDED PRE-SCHOOL WORKERS REJECT CONTRACT

From DNA Info via Harris Lirtzman:

MANHATTAN — Workers at hundreds of city-funded pre-schools serving low-income New Yorkers have voted down a new union-backed contract — in a surprise upset that forced City Hall to cancel a planned victorious press conference, DNAinfo New York has learned.

A group of 220 union members of the Day Care Local 205 — or about 7 percent of the 3,200 membership — voted "no" to a four-year contract that its parent union, DC 1707, wholeheartedly supported, in an emergency meeting Wednesday night. The contract got 158 votes to ratify, according to a tally from union officials.

The contract would have been the first in the past decade to include a raise for day care workers — many of whom have been toiling at poverty-level wages, including subsisting on food stamps. 


So a group of workers barely surviving on subsistence wages who have not had a raise since 2006 are able to say no to the city and their union leaders. I respect their intestinal fortitude.

If only the supposedly much more powerful members of the United Federation of Teachers had acted like the pre-school day care workers and voted against the pathetic 2014 UFT contract negotiated by Michael Mulgrew, then we would have renegotiated when the city was swimming in surplus revenue.

If more teachers showed some courage by standing up to our union bosses, we might not have to wait until 2020 to be paid for work we did back in 2009. Then again, our union has built a formidable machine that it uses to deceive its members when necessary so it's not all on the membership.