Monday, October 22, 2018

CUNY PROFESSOR DAVID BLOOMFIELD WRITES CITY LIMITS OP-ED OPPOSING UFT CONTRACT

I came to know Professor CUNY Education Professor David Bloomfield in the closiing schools fight earlier this decade. He was a real supporter of Jamaica High School staying open. Today, he has an op-ed piece in City Limits where he comes out against the UFT Contract. He cites a number of problems.

Here is an excerpt:

Indeed, it’s hard to understand what the union was thinking in negotiating the new deal. After Janus v. AFSCME, where the U.S. Supreme Court barred compulsory public union agency fees for non-member employees, it was important for the UFT – a national symbol of public unions’ strength – to demonstrate its worth so that dues-paying membership would be promoted. Instead, President Mulgrew posed for a back-slapping photo-op with the Mayor and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, who called Mulgrew his “brother from another mother.”

At almost every turn, the contract benefits the Department of Education and does little to improve the lot of the vast majority of union members. Salaries are at best stable with raises unlikely to meet increases in the cost of living. More importantly, the city undercut a decades-long union policy that, except for seniority and educational attainment, would not allow the DOE to pay some teachers more than others. Under the Bronx Plan, STEM teachers in certain schools will make more than their citywide colleagues. It is hard to imagine the rank-and-file submitting to such inequity, undermining the very idea of union solidarity. As detailed in a recent City Limits story, teacher supply varies enormously. Are elementary school teachers to be paid less than high school teachers? Will science teachers be paid more than those in the arts and humanities? Will teachers in Harlem, an area of high teacher turnover, be paid more than those in Staten Island, the district with lowest attrition? What was Mulgrew thinking?

Provisions like expedited class size protocols and greater consultation roles do little to improve the day-to-day lot of teachers. Most won’t even notice these changes. And even new teacher leader positions help just a few. Increased distance learning poses an existential threat to teacher jobs and is of dubious instructional worth. Course-specific professional development stipends may target the DOE’s instructional needs but limit teachers’ choice. The contract continues to protect educators in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool, those who lost jobs as a result of school closures and the like, but these are an infinitesimal segment of its 185,000 members. What was Mulgrew thinking?


 What was Mulgrew thinking?

We'll have more Vote NO pieces soon.



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

We are living in times of learning to survive rather prosper. That is it in a nut shell folks. Come on a 3 percent raise? In NYC that 3 percent raise now makes me eligible to give a buck to the person on the train asking for money.

Yes people, in a time of ball players making hundreds of millions of dollars, actors making 20 million for one movie and a slew of trashy human beings being paid hundreds of millions of dollars. A dumb head on the evening news relaying some dumb news crap is earning a couple of million dollars.

We should be jumping for joy with out single digit raise. Imagine, some goon sitting on the bench at Yankee stadium is making the major league minimum salary of about $600k. The science teacher with several masters degrees at American Studies HS in the Bronx is making $94k. So, we should be happy about the single digit raise and remember in our next life to become a baseball player, be dumb, do not go to college and earn the big bucks.

Anonymous said...

The fact is we are getting a raise that does not match inflation which is really a pay cut. If we are going to take such a low raise, there should be more that the city could give us in regards to working conditions. (Gut the Monday and Tuesday times, bring back seniority transfers) The fact that most of us will be getting 2 observations next year is not a win because NYS law says 2 is the minimum for everybody, not just teachers rated highly effective or effective. I am guessing that when this contract passes ratification in the next couple of weeks, the UFT is going to be laughing will the mayor and the chancellor and sipping cocktails at a swank mid-town hot spot. Just wait till the next contract comes around in 3 years. The city is not going to give us a damn thing in the future.

Anonymous said...

But here us a non-unity member Ex Bd member's response to it
https://citylimits.org/2018/10/23/cityviews-new-uft-contract-will-ease-excesses-of-does-evaluation-system/

James, why don't you comment about that?