DON'T CUT OFF YOUR NOSE TO SPITE YOUR FACE BY ABANDONING UNION

In response to the Janus Supreme Court decision (the comment discussion is fascinating), the UFT put out a statement from President Michael Mulgrew that to me basically brushed off the decision as no big deal. He called the attack on us desperate. I would call it methodical and well planned. We are now a right to work country in the public sector where workers can refuse to join a union but still benefit from what the union does. 

The UFT also had an article with a sidebar what happens now piece. We are printing the what happens now part in full.

What happens now?

If you are a UFT member, you will remain a member. You’ll still receive all of the union benefits that you have paid for and enjoyed over the years.

If you paid agency fees, that arrangement ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Janus case.

Nonmembers will still be covered by the specific terms of the collective bargaining agreements, but you will no longer receive or have access to these services offered by the union:

Certain free legal services

Free counseling

Free or discounted training or professional development

An attorney during 3020-a employee discipline procedures

Member discounts through the UFT, NYSUT and AFT

And you will not be able to participate in union elections, contract ratification votes or votes about school-based options.

What you lose is not exactly earth shattering unless you are in trouble but I would not recommend becoming a freerider if you are a UFT member.

Let's be real people contemplating not staying in the union. Here are three simple questions:

1- Do you honestly believe we would be earning from $56,711 to $119,472 without a union?

2-Do you seriously think we would have a $0 healthcare premium and a pension (albeit an inferior one under Andrew Cuomo's Tier 6) without a union?

3-Do you really believe we can improve future working conditions without the collective strength that a union provides?

Please check out this study from the Economic Policy Institute that shows the impact when unions can and then cannot collect  fair share fees from nonmembers.

Some findings:

• Public-sector unions raise wages of public employees compared with similar nonunion public employees, which helps to narrow the private-public wage gap in those unionized sectors. The current public-employee union wage boost of 5 percent to 8 percent (Keefe 2013) is rather modest and considerably less than the boost that private-sector unions provide. Thus public employee unions, on average, do not raise wages to meet the wages paid to similar private-sector employees.
• However, public-employee unions in full collective-bargaining states that permit union security (i.e., agency shop clauses) do raise total compensation to competitive market standards set by the private sector. In other words, only public employees in states with full collective bargaining make as much as their private-sector peers. In partial collective bargaining states, right-to-work states, and states that prohibit collective bargaining, public employees earn lower wages and compensation than comparable private sector employees, and this low compensation may impede state and local governments from recruiting and retaining highly skilled employees for their many professional and public safety occupations.

Further down the impact of right to work is explained:

The weakening of unions through encouraging free-riding follows from the logic of collective action, which states that an economically rational individual will seek to enjoy the collective benefits of the group without paying for them. This behavior becomes more likely as the group grows in size and peer pressure becomes a less-effective method of enforcement, meaning that large groups often fail without some other compliance methods. The logic of free-riding takes over and the group then lacks the resources to provide the collective goods to its members (Olson 1965). What the private-sector research shows is that right-to-work legislation encourages free-riding and therefore reduces the ability of unions to organize, to negotiate contracts, to maintain majority status, and to represent all members. Consequently, RTW not only has a negative impact on the unions that we observe, but also means that other unions do not exist—even where the majority of employees want representation.

As stated above, this is a well planned attack on all of us. Understand that. The answer for the UFT is not that complicated. They must end the leadership arrogance and start acting like a real union again that involves its members and doesn't treat us in many cases like we are underlings.

I would also like to address here the UFT's claim that we are all still in the union. I hope it is true, however Education Week has an interpretation that might be a little different in a piece called 7 Things to Know about the Supreme Court Decision that Just Slammed Teachers' Unions 

Two of those seven struck me:

2. The justices also ruled that unions cannot deduct fees from employees' paychecks without their express consent. This part of the decision goes beyond what most court watchers were expecting, and it deepens the blow to unions. In some states, teachers have just a limited window of time in which they can tell their union they want to drop their membership. That rule would have been challenged in court had the Janus decision not addressed it. But now, teachers will have to affirmatively opt into paying dues to the union.

Do we have to affirmatively opt in post Janus?

Finally, 7 gives me cause for real hope:

7. This ruling could make unions more responsive to their members. At least one analysis showed that when state unions lose the right to collect agency fees, representatives tend to do more outreach to teachers to convince them to join. Katharine Strunk, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, said unions might now shift their policy priorities to better reflect what their members want. 

We have been calling for the UFT to be more responsive to its members, and not just go through the motions, for years. Imagine what it would be like to have a union that reflects what members want. New York is still a relatively union friendly state. Positive change will only happen if we all remain committed to a union. That means all of us.