A Farewell to Collective Bargaining?
Over the last several years, UFT leadership has claimed repeatedly to be in an existential fight for our very right to collectively bargain. Infamously, they’ve made the absurd claim—over and over again—that pushing retirees onto Medicare Advantage isn’t about saving money at the expense of
As a Bus Strike Looms – How Should the UFT Respond?
On August 28th 2023, Chancellor David Banks emailed tens of thousands of vacationing UFT members about “potential disruptions” to school bus service at the beginning of the coming school year. The potential disruptions stem from a possible strike from the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1181 aga
Is UFT’s New Virtual Instruction Program a Strike-Break Risk?
Teacher unionists everywhere need to be aware of what is going on right now in Youngstown, Ohio. Teachers there are readying to strike, following a breakdown in contract negotiations. They had been offered an offensively low wage increase (2%), to name one of several reasons for the job action. In r
Why do UFT members make less than teachers in LA and Oakland?
During the course of UFT-Unity’s ‘yes vote’ campaign, we saw highly paid UFT staffers making well over $200,000 a year repeatedly tell us that we were wrong to factor inflation into pay increases. Some officers and staffers called our pleas to match wage increases with inflation &#
DESPICABLE ACTS AND ANTI-UNION BEHAVIOR
You would think this describes management or the actions of corporate actors or advocates of charters and vouchers. Today we have only have to look at our own union leadership in the UFT. We need only to look as far as what Michael Mulgrew and Unity have perpetrated on the OT/PT chapter to understan
Don’t Forget Our Probationary Teachers
Just recently many UFT retired members led by New Action joined with thousands of other retired members from other Unions to lead protests and support lawsuits to Protect our Healthcare. In the last week a New York City Supreme Court Judge ruled in favor of the NYC Organization of Municipal Retirees
Retirees Win! – For-Profit Mulgrewcare Plan Quashed Again
The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees has officially won its lawsuit against the City, preventing Adams, Mulgrew, and the MLC from forcing medicare-eligible retirees off of GHI Seniorcare and onto a for-profit Medicare Advantage plan (MAP) run by Aetna. The decision is brief, essentially j
“The City Said No:” or How UFT Leadership ‘Negotiates’
Earlier this summer, our union membership ratified most of the contracts that we’d been negotiating with the City. As we all know, one bargaining unit voted no on theirs, and the response from UFT leadership was nothing short of disappointing. Put briefly, UFT/Unity delivered the ‘news’ that t
Mulgrew Overturns OT/PT ‘No’ Vote – Revote Scheduled This Month
This afternoon, UFT leadership decided that the OT/PT bargaining unit would be split up between those who voted no (OT/PTs) and those who voted yes (nurses, supervisors of OT/PTs, nurse supervisors, and audiologists). The subunits who already voted ‘yes’ will not get a revote. They will automati
A Union Finally Beats the Pattern.
This week, we learned that a municipal union finally beat the DC37 pattern – indeed, they beat it by a substantial margin – roughly double. Nurses working in NYC’s municipal hospitals have negotiated a contract that, with 37% pay increases over 5.5 years, puts the UFT’s unpensionable