CAN THE UFT WIN A BASICALLY OPEN AND SHUT GRIEVANCE TO GET SPECIAL PER SESSION PAY FOR ALL SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS WHO TEACH AN EXTRA CLASS?

This is an excerpt from an email sent by Aviation Chapter Leader Ibeth Mejia to the rank and file at her school. 

6th Period Pay Grievance:

As many of you know, Aviation High School is involved in a major grievance on pay for teaching an extra class. For many years the administration has been shortchanging teachers in non-shortage areas, including many shop teachers, by paying teachers in non-shortage areas a lower coverage rate ($45.38 per period) instead of the contractually mandated special per session rate now at over $7,200 per semester. While doing research on this topic, we found out that Circular 6R says that from 1998-99 and thereafter the Board of Education has mandated that non-shortage area teachers should be paid at the special per session rate if they teach an extra class. Teachers at Aviation and other schools have been ripped off for over 20 years when they were paid the coverage rate.

We showed this document to a representative at the UFT Grievance Department and then one of our members was about to win an arbitration to get paid the special per session rate. However, the UFT pulled the grievance and said they would go to a different arbitrator to make this case a citywide precedent.** At that point, something happened and now this seems to be only about Aviation again. We have been told if we win the school will no longer be able to afford its fifth-year program and we could lose it. The DOE, including our administration, claims they don't have the funds to pay the rate required by the contract so the UFT wants us to cut a deal for some compromise rate between the special per session and coverage rate. We find this to be insulting.

We cannot accept that if teachers are paid according to what the contract and a Board of Education document mandate that our school and our students will lose the world-renowned Aviation 5th year program. The city-DOE needs to fund us adequately so we can be paid at the contractually mandated rate if they want our teachers to teach extra classes. 

I have met with the Shop Department. A consensus has emerged that we should fight for the pay we are contractually entitled to for the work we do while retaining our fifth year program. 

I am happy to answer questions if any of the academic UFTers want to join this battle. The contract matters. It is why you elected me as Chapter Leader.

For the record, Principal Steve Jackson stated the following in an email: "As principal of Aviation High School, I would never let the fifth year program be eliminated." 

ICEUFT Blog unsolicited advice to the principal:

Sir, don't try to save money on the backs of your teachers. Pay them what they are contractually entitled to and move on.*

Here is a link to Circular 6R.

This is the part of page 8 that the Chapter Leader referred to:

For those who are thinking that Article 7-A(10)j is no longer in the Contract, it is still there. It is now Article 7A6d (same wording; also corresponding Article 7B8d is there for middle schools).

d. Provided that these periods are used to supplement, not supplant the current school program, and subject to the specific provisions regarding it, secondary teachers may use this time for a sixth teaching period compensated in accordance with Article 7O of the Agreement (Shortage License Areas). The chapter’s concurrence to ensure that this is truly supplemental is necessary.

This is as close to an open and shut case as you can get. It should be a citywide grievance for all teachers in non-shortage areas who teach an extra class. The language is clear in the Contract and Circular 6R. Randi didn't give this one away in 2005. Remember, the nonprecedential case was pulled to set a citywide precedent. Non-shortage area teachers should always get the special per session pay rate, not the lower coverage rate if they teach an extra class. Coverages should only be used for absent teachers, not semester-long classes.

There are only two possible ways the UFT could lose this case:

1-The arbitrator is irrational.

2-The UFT is in the tank with the Department of Education.

My fear, of course, since we know the players, is obviously number 2. For those who are thinking why not just hire more shop teachers as this impacts around 20 shop teachers and a few other academic teachers too at one school, shop might not be a shortage area in certain schools but finding FAA-certified people to teach in an FAA-approved program is not easy.  Regardless, C6R and the Contract say the DOE has to pay the higher rate.

If Chancellor David Banks and Mayor Eric Adams would risk this program because they don't want to pay shop teachers what they are contractually entitled to, then they need to stop their rhetoric about how they support Career and Technical Education. 

If the UFT can't win this one so that anyone in a non-shortage area gets paid the proper rate for teaching an extra class, then they once again show they are really not a labor union (unless I am missing something which I wish you Unity folks would tell me how this is more complicated than I am seeing).

*Full disclosure: I worked as an ATR at Aviation for two months in 2014. The administration, including Jackson who was an AP back then, was good to me. I have seen way worse. 

**A UFT official reported on Thursday that it was the DOE, not the UFT, that wanted this grievance pulled for precedential purposes. We asked for Unity to correct us. This is what they sent to the Chapter. The Chapter Leader stands by the original email as she wrote what she was told by two UFT officials.