Tier 6 Members are Losing Millions to Subsidize Tier 4 – UFT Executive Board Meeting, 12-4, 2023
Summary/Analysis: For the rest, read my unofficial minutes: Open Mic: Norm Scott: A number of issues that the UFT has let us down. Healthcare. We hear the word choice – somehow we don’t have the choice because of lawsuits. But choice with a price. The choice you can have is you stay in Medicare
NYC Teachers Just Took an Inflation-Adjusted Pay Cut – Why are Pundits Pretending We’re Bankrupting the City?
Betsy McCaughey, the Republican politician who thankfully served only briefly as the former Lt. Governor of New York, wrote an appalling piece in the Post this week. In it she makes the pretend argument that labor contracts, particularly labor contracts for teachers, are causing New York City’s fi
What is to be done about Tier 6?
If you’re in Tier 6, you’ve probably heard that your pension is much worse than your peers in Tier 4, Tier 2, and Tier 1. But—just how much worse is it? What are the chances that it will be ‘fixed’ before you retire or hit various pension milestones? Can we rely on the usual methods—like
Budget Cuts, Healthcare Cuts: UFT Executive Board Meeting – 11/20/2023
Summary: This was a quick meeting or a long meeting, depending on how you look at it. Mulgrew wasn’t here; nor was Barr, so Mike Sill ran the show. The main subject was budget cuts. As we know, the Mayor is slashing the DOE’s budget by more than half a billion dollars. That is dangerous [&hellip
The UFT Must Mobilize Immediately to Fight Budget Cuts
Mayor Adams is at war with our education system, plundering it of an unprecedented $547 million right in the middle of the school year. Adams has no reason to cut the budget. While he claims that the migrant crisis is so expensive to the City that we now need other cuts to public spending, the [&hel
UFT Delegates say NO to Cease Fire Language in Humanitarian Reso – UFT Delegate Assembly, 11-15, 2023
Quick Summary and Analysis: Tonight was the second DA of the year. While eventful, this was also the second DA in a row this year in which we failed to debate even one resolution about our own working conditions. NAC released a ‘working conditions’ challenge to encourage delegates to bring worki
Introducing the Working Conditions Challenge!
Our union has a delegate assembly (DA) problem. In the last three years alone, DA resolutions seeking substantive policies to improve the working conditions of our membership have been outnumbered 3:1 by purely symbolic proclamations and political endorsements. In 2021, only a single resol
An Uncharacteristically Brief Meeting – UFT Executive Board, 11-6-23
Tonight’s UFT executive board lasted just 30ish minutes. Of that half hour, 10 minutes went to the open mic period, in which 4 people spoke well on why they thought UFT leadership had made the wrong choice to remove Amy Arundell from her post as Queens Borough Rep. Michael Mulgrew, perhaps still w
Out-Negotiated, Again: How Other Unions’ Recent Contracts Outperform the UFT’s
UFT members have our new contract. Mulgrew’s Koolaid vendors will tell you it’s the best deal we’ve ever had. But, the truth is that it’s a snore of an agreement, complete with inflation-adjusted pay cuts despite very few gains and even some losses. Other teacher contracts over the course of
Why Don’t UFT Staffers Have Due Process? – UFT Executive Board Meeting,10-23-2023
Summary/Analysis: The main topic of tonight’s executive board meeting was Amy Arundell. I have to give Amy credit. Despite everything, she came to the meeting tonight and sat through it all. And there was a lot. During the open mic, several speakers spoke at their dismay about Amy’s reassig