HANDICAPPING THE CONTRACT RATIFICATION PERCENTAGES

They don't take scientific polls on how a contract ratification vote will go but as ballots were due at the American Arbitration Association on Wednesday, we would like to take a guess at how the contract ratification vote will turn out.

Everyone thinks the contract will easily pass. It is just a question of by how huge a margin. The UFT only sends material out that says that the contract is the greatest thing since sliced bread and we dissidents have to spread the word online. In the olden days, we used to trek across to schools to hand out leaflets. At least we knew how many people we were reaching.  It is still a daunting task to try to get through on the internet to over 100,000 UFT members working in the schools. If people only hear the pro-contract message, they will  support it.

I think it is impossible given our lack of presence in the schools and the split in the opposition to Michael Mulgrew's Unity Caucus reported on by Norm Scott (who is against the contract) that we will reach enough UFT members to come anywhere near voting down the contract as we did in 1995. In the summer of 2018, DC37 had a 97% yes vote on a contract very similar to the UFT's. Defeating this has about as much chance as winning the mega-millions without buying a ticket. 94% was the highest approval rate for a UFT contract in my activist years. That contract saw 15% raises in exchange for extended time, but the extended time provision was so poorly done that it had to be renegoiated four times in the next four years and was changed again by the next two contracts.

I am setting the over/under for this contract at 89% approval as that was the yes vote in 2006, the last early  contract. (2005 contract did not expire until 2007; the current contract expires in 2019.) Back then, the opposition to Mulgrew/Randi Weingarten's Unity Caucus was split on whether to support a new contract with New Action Caucus in favor and ICE-TJC (the Independent Community of Educators-Teachers for a Just Contract) against.

However, on the UFT Executive Board in 2006, it was a very different situation compared to now. All six High School Executive Board members from the opposition ICE-TJC, including me, voted no on the early 2007 contract. We were on the Negotiating Committee too but we knew that deal was just an extension of the awful 2005 contract. Even though that contract raised top salaries to $100,00 a year, we concluded it was still an anti-teacher document. Politically, the early deal helped Weingarten. She ran for reelection in 2007 based on that contract and knocked us off the Executive Board. Working conditions under that 2007 contract continued to deteriorate for UFT members even though there were new committees created to deal with certain problems just like the 2019 deal. The other opposition group, New Action, supported the 2007 early contract but they were not on the Executive Board at the time. ICE-TJC easily defeated them in the 2007 election.

Today's High School Executive Board representatives elected by MORE and New Action are all supporters of the 2018 contract to my knowledge. MORE opposes the deal as does Solidarity while NAC has taken no position as far as I know. ICEUFT is split but this blog has been a leading voice in opposition. Not one of the high school Executive Board members represented many of the people that elected them when it came to the contract. Instead, they are basically contract cheerleaders with only one even acknowledging the many negative parts. That hasn't helped the opposition vote and so we might take the over because of that.

I do hope to be totally wrong in my 89% yes over/under projection this week. I have spent enough time being one of the trade unionist voices in the UFT wilderness. Maybe this online activism is somehow getting through to more UFT members. We have received tens of thousands of total hits on our critical contract pieces. Perhaps, that will translate into at least a few more no votes. May modern technology be a bit of an equalizer.

What do you think?