Friday, September 28, 2018

PSC-CUNY RALLIES AT WALL STREET AND UPDATE MEMBERS ON NEGOTIATIONS

The UFT conducts contract negotiations in secret. If I ever had a role in running a teacher union, I would quickly change how the union does business by not having secret negotiations and I would be updating the rank and file on how negotiations are proceeding.

Our friends at City University of New York in the Professional Staff Congress give updates to their rank and file in public. On Wednesday they updated their members on how the negotiations with CUNY are proceeding.

From the latest PSC update:

• CUNY management has presented a formal list of demands but has, so far, stressed only a few demands as priorities. Among them is a demand to allow full-time faculty to count summer teaching as part of the annual teaching load--and thus to open the door to an academic calendar with year-round teaching for full-time faculty and no summer annual leave. As you can imagine, the union has raised serious concerns about this demand.

I wish we knew what was going on in UFT Department of Education-City of New York negotiations. We could discuss what the DOE wants, if anything, in exchange for changing the evaluation system to two observations per year as per the state law. We should be discussing in the schools what is on the negotiating table.

PSC rallied on Wall Street in support of their contract goals yesterday.

Serious question: When was the last time the UFT tried to get the members out for a citywide mass demonstration for anything?

12 comments:

  1. Yeah keep paying dues you fool

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  2. 2005 contract maybe? Yeah, give me the retro now, I will quit. We know the deal, 3 and a half years or so, 7 % or so, backloaded. Job will always be awful and continue to worsen. But lets blame Trump. And lets watch the rest of the country strike and say its because they are mad at Republicans...As we refuse to strike, and still wait for our 1% raises and our interest free retro for 11 years, as it erodes against inflation.

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  3. Just got the email from Hinds, uft classes, of course they suck money out of you, on designing coherent instruction. How about instruction on having hs students learn how to read. what a bunch of garbage.

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  4. Students are a bunch of morons and so is anyone who doesn't pull dues.

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  5. Am I required to do jupiter grades? Or any type of electronic grades?

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  6. Not according to President Mulgrew at the DA.

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  7. Ok, well then my staff is a bunch of suckers.

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  8. staff at a whole bunch of schools are suckers!

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  9. No kidding, the whole teaching staff in the city, for the most part...

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  10. Meanwhile, has anyone had the pleasure of meeting any of the new Superintendents now that they need help... Executive Superintendent's do what exactly? The top loading is insane. There's money for raises, lower class ratios and technology, but we're loading up on executive positions with golden parachute pensions. INSANE! Cupboards are empty folks. For a bunch of "supposedly" educated people, we're all a bunch of fools. Our lump sums are being eroded by inflation daily and I see the "sheep" in my school giddy to get the next insulting 25%. The mentality is like a kid in the super market as a parent is about to put a quarter in a gum ball machines. WOW! I can't wait... and then they get the gum ball and its hard and loses flavor almost instantly.

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  11. Can't speak to all the executive superintendents, but the one in Manhattan has engaged in systematic targeting of teachers and implementation of ever-increasing, ever-insane evaluation mandates and rules and is widely despised by staff (both UFT and CSA) in schools she oversaw as superintendent.

    See links here about life under Superintendent Marisol Rosales:

    https://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2018/04/dear-mr-mulgrew-uft-chapter-at-high.html

    http://www.uftsolidarity.org/manhattan-uft-please-help-schools-from-superintendent-marisol-rosales-attacks/

    The UFT of course did nothing to rein her in. Alice O'Neill, the UFT DR, was AWOL. Some say she worked in collusion with Rosales and/or principals to undermine UFT staff and CL's:

    http://www.uftsolidarity.org/takeaction/repreview/alice-oneil/

    This all makes sense, of course, because the UFT was a company union in cahoots with Bill de Blasio, Carmen Farina and Tweed.

    The UFT continues to be a company union now, with Farina gone, and does nothing to fight against Tweed malfeasance and/or abuse.

    Until UFT leadership is starved of funds and forced to actually protect members or face an ever-dwindling dues pool to play with, nothing will change.

    When June comes and UFT members can opt out of the UFT, you can bet the numbers will spike from last year (when the UFT, in collusion with Cuomo, put the fix in to maintain UFT membership by limiting the period of opt outs from the union to a couple of weeks.)

    You can also bet that the UFT will have difficulty signing up new hires to the UFT. Why should people pay $1500 a year to Mulgrew and Company to when the UFT does little-to-nothing tangible to protect teachers, in particular un-tenured teachers who face perennial extensions on their attempts to get tenure or permanent discontinuance from the DOE with nary a complaint from the hacks at 52 Broadway?

    UFT and AFT leadership brag about how nobody left after Janus. They claim that shows how much support the union has from membership.

    The truth is, they managed to limit leaving to a short period right after Janus, right at the end of the school year, and so were able to maintain their numbers.

    But I would bet my 7% TDA (which used to be 8.25%, but why should the UFT fight to maintain what CSA members get when they can instead concede and screw their own members?) that each year, UFT numbers will dwindle, as a small percentage of current members leave during the opt out period and the UFT finds it extremely difficult to sign up new members as they join the teaching force.

    A dwindling UFT membership will be a huge problem for us, as we will have less and less power politically and in negotiations against the city, but this may be the only way for the company union leadership at 52 Broadway to wake up and realize the games they have been playing, the lies and horseshit they have been slinging and the collusion and collaboration they have been engaging in with Tweed and the mayor is no longer a tenable way to run things.

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  12. Some very important points RBE. I hope you will be at the Friday, ICEUFT meeting.

    I also think a great message would be a huge no vote on a contract that we already pretty much know what it looks like.

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