Report-back from the UFT Delegate Assembly, October 14, 2015 *
President’s Report
This was the first delegate assembly of the 2015-16 school year, and
President Mulgrew gave an extended report – over an hour-and-a-half (we
delegates have to fight for every nano-second we get to discuss on the
floor or our meeting).
There were two big issues on the floor -- Retro Pay and the Supreme Court
"Friedrichs" pending decision
The first issue was over the retro pay formula and all the non-money we
didn’t actually get that we expected to get. The MORE caucus had a motion
for the UFT to help needy colleagues who aren’t getting their retro, to get
no-interest loans.
This would effect mothers on maternity leave, or others on extended leave,
and the loans could tide them over. That sparked a really nasty fight from
the Unity Caucus people who made sure it was voted down.
The second issue was the ominous upcoming Supreme Court decision which
would outlaw the “agency shop.” It is aimed squarely at bankrupting and
busting the teachers’ unions around the country.
I’ll get to these, but here are the other punch lines from the meeting:
· National issues: Mulgrew was very positive about last Tuesday’s
Democratic Party debate. He skipped over the fact that the AFT (and thus
the UFT) and the NEA have already endorsed Clinton. I will continue to
argue that unions are working class outfits and should not support the
capitalist parties of Wall Street. Besides which, Clinton never saw a war
she didn’t love, and Sanders has shown his hostility to Black Lives Matter;
moreover, all of them support the union-busting “reform” education agenda.
· NY State: There are protracted negotiations in Albany over the
final state regulations for student testing and teacher evaluations.
Albany is insisting on testing regs for kids based on their chronological
age. He said that if you force that on students with IEPs and
developmental issues, and with ESL students who don’t speak a word of
English – it is nothing short of child abuse.
· Teacher evals: November 15th is the final date for the state’s
teacher evaluation law. If there is no agreement, then we have a right to
jointly ask for a waiver and extend the date; since no agreement seems
forthcoming, therefore…...(he said we can figure out where that’s at right
now).
· Good news – there are over 6,000 new UFT members in the
schools! The number of new teachers is way up. And oversize class size
grievances are way down --- this is the difference between the
Bloomberg/Klein era and the DeBlasio/Carmen regime, he inferred.
· Teacher retention will still be a huge challenge; the UFT has a
New Teacher Initiative, with workshops and other resources--- all members
should try to help the new teachers through this really difficult time.
The UFT wants to start a Labor Education Institute (the name will
be changed). This will at first be open to all those who are in the
Delegate Assembly and then expanded. There will be classes so teachers can
become experts in fields beyond their own, or work further in their own
field. (I presume this is along the lines of the various CUNY Worker
Education institutes, but he didn’t specify. )
Retro Pay (or lack thereof). This was the bulk of Mulgrew’s
report. He spent a lot of time justifying how the agreement came out.
Bloomberg insisted that nothing says in law they're required to pay us
retro. His line was part of the whole war against teachers, including
school closings, “merit pay,” trying to get rid of seniority; the threat to
lay off 5000 senior teachers by reversing LIFO (Last In First Out.) Then
Bloomberg deliberately bankrupted the city coffers to say there was no
money left for city workers, and then what he really meant, no money for
teachers.
· Mulgrew detailed this background to the complicated retro pay
agreement. He instructed the delegates and chapter leaders to have no
discussion about any individual teacher’s payment, but to refer them to the
UFT experts. That is because the money we got was based on a “compound
growth formula.” Everybody is different, he stressed. Math teachers, help
me out here, I’m not even going to try to explain it. I only know I got
peanuts.
*The two big issues:*
*1) Retro pay and the MORE caucus resolution*
The MORE caucus put up a resolution: “DA Resolution on Immediate
Retroactive Money for UFT Members on Unpaid Leave for Maternity, Child Care
and/or Restoration of Health.” I thought this had a fighting chance to
win; it seemed obvious and compassionate. Jia Li argued it quite well on
the floor of the D.A. She stressed that even President Mulgrew had stated
that people with medical problems should not also have to face economic
problems. Apparently this doesn’t apply to helping our own colleagues who
are temporarily off salary and thus more needy.
Unity wanted this voted down. The argumentation was ugly: The Queens UFT
liason for maternity and health leaves actually said, “You decided to take
your leave, you got to handle your own business, you have to consider
things before taking leave”. Was this Maggie Thatcher or Marie Antoinette?
MORE, by the way, did not help their case by handing out copies of the
resolution with ads on the back of their flyer for various MORE
activities. That was ok with me, although I’m not a member of MORE, I'm in
a different tendency, Class Struggle Education Workers. But the Unity
delegates jumped on the flyer ads in an orgy of red-baiting (and MORE isn’t
even red).
The Unity people also noticed (quite correctly) that the MORE flyer didn’t
have a union bug. The tradition of the labor movement is that all
distributed printed material must either have a union bug, or if the effort
is donated by members, then stating “labor donated.” But this is par for
the course for MORE, showing it’s increasing distance from labor’s struggle.
2)
* Upcoming Supreme Court decision on Friedrichs v. California Teachers
Association*
The Supreme Court solicited this case from a small group of right-wing
California union-busters who want to outlaw the “agency shop.” The union
shop was outlawed under Taft-Hartley in 1947. Agency shop means you sign
the union card when you start work. Or not. You don’t have to join the
union if you don’t want to. But whether you’re a member of not, you still
get all the services the union provides (contractual salary rates, no
lunch-room duty, a six-hour-fifty-minute school day [broken down in the
complicated PD formula]) etc. You get all that whether or not you’re in
the union, and the union has the right to collect a fee from everyone for
the services they provide.
Overturning the agency shop is a scheme to bankrupt the public
workers unions. Specifically the teachers unions which have been the main
target of the so-called “education reformers.” They have been unsuccessful
so far, so now they’re trying to do it through the courts.
There is a huge amount to say about this. Suffice it to say here
that the union should have never allowed the government to be the overseer
of our funds. The government is not neutral, and they are now wielding that
power against us. We need to go back to the union shop, collect our own
dues, and build union power through hard class struggle.
There will be a resolution coming up next month on the UFT’s fight
against Freidrichs. As expected, Unity caucus thinks they can do it
through legislation and electing friendly Democrats. The Supreme Court is
not subject to legislation and they aren’t elected. The only way to stop
this is to get everyone out in the streets in the thousands, across the
country. I will be talking about this more.
That’s it for now.
*As one of your UFT delegates I report-back on the monthly meetings. These
reports are "my take" on the meeting. For official minutes, let me know and
I'll send them along to you.