UFT Tentative Agreement Online (Mostly) – Not as Rosy as Mulgrew’s Presentations

This morning, I published a piece analyzing the tentative agreement based solely on the promotional materials put out by Michael Mulgrew. This afternoon, the MOA itself was posted, along with some appendices. At one point there was a message that appendices were still being added. It’s unclear if more is still to come.

I’ve taken a first read of the MOA, and appreciate that text that was added/subtracted from the previous agreement is clearly shown. And already, I see some problems – details that were not highlighted in the ‘yes vote’ literature we were subjected to yesterday (in my case, 3 times). I’ll focus on one glaring issue that is distinctly NOT highlighted in any of the promotional materials but appears clearly in the MOA itself.

Parent Engagement and Micromanagement: Revocation of Remote Privileges

Here is what Mulgrew presented:

Here is what he left out:

See the difference? And this language is odd. We already have mechanisms for when teachers allegedly don’t fulfill contractual responsibilities (counseling memos, letters in the file, 3020a hearings). The language here bypasses the usual system and goes straight to revocation of the right to work from home. To make matters worse, it’s unclear what standards will be used to make this decision. Can you imagine how different principals will define the word “satisfactory?” Might some definitions exceed what is possible in 55 minutes? In a school system as large as ours, we know the answer is yes. We can all imagine the administrative abuses of power and incidents of micromanagement that are going to occur over parent engagement in some schools. It is absolutely an issue that we have contractual language that principals can seemingly “revoke” our remote privileges seemingly at will.

This line clearly matters. It should have been in the UFT PowerPoint. It should have been in the presentation. It should have been in the contract at a glance. But, because it’s not something teachers will want to read, it’s left out. We get the rosy picture that makes us more likely to vote yes, just as we did with the misleading presentation in 2018. This is why we can’t vote based off of presentations – we need to read the full text.

A reminder that this is just one line of many. Make sure that you and your chapters read through the entire MOA and appendixes. Because, as this one example makes crystal clear, we CANNOT trust the neutrality/accuracy of the promotional materials.