New Action – UFT

Something is rotten at 52 Broadway, where higher-ups seem to be orchestrating an unprecedented ‘re-vote’ on the contract for OT/PT’s, nurses, audiologists, and supervisors of nurses/therapists. They’ll do anything, it seems, to avoid doing the work of negotiating a fair deal. 

Some Background: Why did OT/PTs Reject the Contract?

OT/PTs had good reason to reject draft #1 of the 2022-2027 contract. Nothing, after all, was done on the largest issue facing therapists – pay parity. OT/PTs, whose particularly exacting educational qualifications translate into some of the biggest student loan burdens in the DOE, would have still made significantly less than teachers, social workers, speech therapists, and counselors. But, it’s not just that pay parity wasn’t a part of the contract – it’s the convoluted way that UFT leadership tried to get around this by adding a ‘9th optional session’ for which therapists would get an extra 1/8th of their pay. OT/PTs on the negotiating committee, who never discussed this possibility with the DOE, were flabbergasted to see such language written into the tentative agreement, not just because it had been negotiated over their heads, but because they’d been saying ‘no!’ to different variations of it for years. 

There’s a reason OT/PTs pause at the language of a 9th session (right now they work 8). Most of them already work 2-3 extra jobs to make ends meet; they weren’t looking for another opportunity to work more hours. They were looking to see their pay equalized with other similarly educated UFT titles so that they wouldn’t have to work so many extra hours. Agreeing to a 9th session bolsters the City’s view that OT/PTs don’t deserve pedagogical pay for what they’re already doing. It means, to be frank, acquiescence to defeat on parity. And it could potentially open a Pandora’s Box by which at some point down the line all therapists may be expected to work a 9th session. 

Enter UFT Leadership

In my last piece, I touched a bit on the ‘gloom and doom’ communications that Mulgrew et al have shot out at the aggrieved therapists. UFT leadership dangled the new pay increases that OT/PTs would not get, failing (probably intentionally) to mention that pattern bargaining would get them that money eventually as retro. Union officers also suggested that the City might not negotiate with them for months – or perhaps longer. Most importantly, they projected that, when they ‘finally’ did get back to the negotiating table, UFT leadership wouldn’t have the will or the skill to get them anything of substance. Then, with these new ‘facts,’ someone mentioned the word ‘revote.’ 

Since this meeting, the possibility of a revote seems to be gaining steam – especially (but not entirely) amongst the therapists who already voted yes or didn’t bother to send in their ballots. Unity-affiliated members in particular, including some who were voted out when OT/PTs for a Fair Contract beat them in the last chapter election, seem to be leading the drive to ‘revote, but this time vote yes!’ Members of the OT/PT negotiating team are being inundated with form emails that ask for a revote, often giving a false sense of blame to Chapter Leader Melissa Williams for the contract’s fate, despite her not even having a hand in the most controversial parts of the contract draft.  In fact, these are the only communications going around at this point, as UFT officers have been MIA, opting not to bother setting up timely meetings to do the work it will take to negotiate quickly with the City in good faith.

Let’s recap: a chapter organizes a no vote, because they aren’t getting what they need to pay their bills. Union leaders tell that chapter that they were wrong to vote no, taunt them about what they won’t get as a result, and convey that negotiators aren’t going to get them anything better anyways. Then, they let the word ‘revote’ sink in, disappear, members from their caucus start organizing a ‘revote yes campaign,’ using it secondarily as a springboard to sow dissent against the current OT/PT leadership, and the UFT officers just wait to see what unfolds.

What’s wrong with a revote?

Some may ask, what’s wrong with a revote? At least with a ‘re-vote,’ members are still voting – it’s still democratic. And it’s true, there are moments when ‘revotes’ make sense. For example, let’s say that some disaster destroyed thousands of ballots and the numbers were extremely close. There would be an absolute argument for a revote. But that’s not what happened here. 

We had a ratification vote with good turnout – a majority of OT/PTs voting. We had the AAA certify the results. And we had numbers that weren’t even close – a clear no vote. You don’t do revotes because your leadership wanted you to vote yes, or because a small group of people, mostly who voted yes to begin with, are trying to overturn the results. And you certainly don’t try to tip the scales by implying to working educators that you aren’t going to do the work of negotiating a fair deal anyways, so they might as well just go ahead and revote. No, it’s the obligation of UFT leadership to do the work of negotiating, not of trying to orchestrate a plan to sow dissent so that they don’t have to do the work. 

A Note on Precedent 

Those who know their union history know that UFT leadership isn’t above revotes. When NAC co-chair, Michael Shulman, won the VP of High Schools position in the 1980s, they stole half his term while the question lingered in courts, only to eventually compel a revote that Shulman re-won anyways. (Then, we know, they changed the constitution so that opposition caucuses could no longer win divisional officer seats unless they won the entire election).

Communications with PERB suggest that were we to do a ‘revote’ on the OT/PT contract ratification, rather than do the work of renegotiating, we would set the precedent for revotes in general. And with Unity in power, we know that this could be abused – we’d see a semblance of democracy, but only when it suited the ruling party. 

It gets worse. A high-up lawyer working for the UFT has expressed that votes aren’t even legally how contracts need to be ratified. If they wanted to, it appears, UFT leadership believes that they could sign a contract without having us vote at all. Whether they’d actually do that is an open question, but the precedent that they appear to be supporting, by withdrawing from good-faith bargaining and encouraging a revote in the middle of summer, bodes badly for union democracy.

UFT leadership, in this blogger’s opinion, needs to do the work of getting back to the bargaining table, not of disorganizing membership into revoting so that they have an easier summer. 

Today, the 2022-2027 contract was ratified by a roughly 3/4 majority of voting UFT members. We have yet to see all data on divisional groups and functional chapters, some of whom were particularly ill-affected by sub-inflation pay increases and are thus expected to have closer numbers. To that end, OT/PTs once again voted down their functional contract (1,129 no to 782 yes), along with nurses, audiologists, and supervisors of nurses and therapists. But, teachers overwhelmingly voted to ratify – albeit with a much smaller ‘yes’ margin (under 75%) than in 2018 (87%) and a smaller margin than 2014 (77%).

While New Action Caucus recommended voting ‘no’ on the contract, it’s no surprise that the result was ‘yes.’ Unlike 1995, when the givebacks were so blatantly obvious that teachers voted ‘no’ in overwhelming numbers and somewhat successfully negotiated a better deal, the issues for the 2023 deal were subtler. A record-fast voting process met with a bombardment of intimidation and misinformation made it easy for Unity to sweep many of the problems and potential problems under the rug, while implying that minor wins were far more major in scope than they actually were. But make no mistake, the givebacks and potential givebacks are there. Until 2027, here is some of what we have gained:

• PD is now 20 minutes shorter each week, though most of that time has been repurposed into parent outreach rather than OPW time.
• Teachers can perform parent outreach remotely, but with new paperwork requirements and other red tape.
• We now have more flexible bereavement time.
• Elementary school teachers now get dismissal responsibilities factored into their workdays. They also should not be made to work more than three periods in a row, although only when administratively possible.
• We get a few other minor and conditional perks here and there, most of which I go over in this post.

But, here is some of what we must now worry about:

• Wage increases that are significantly below inflation.
• If all healthcare givebacks weren’t factored into the record-low 3%ish salary increases, we could also see additional healthcare cuts going forward, as Mulgrew has already prepped us to accept. This possibility goes double now that Judge Frank has ruled in favor, even temporarily, of retirees not having their healthcare pillaged.
• A portion of our income is now in the form of unpensionable bonuses that could have just been a pensionable part of our salaries.
• There is no explicit language in the new TA specifying class size caps for virtual schooling. We do not want to have to rely on an arbitrator if our implicit assumptions aren’t shared by the City. This could be a disastrous situation, especially in the high schools.
• As a condition of remote parent outreach time, there is new language requiring excessively collected paperwork/documentation. A principal can also take away your right to work from home without due process. Consequences without procedural guidelines or recourse is a blatantly anti-union premise and opens a pandora’s box for further future language chipping away at our due process rights.
• We now have new paperwork possibilities. Curriculum Mapping is against the language of the previous contract. But in the new contract, it’s a C6 option. Should teachers who were promised reduced paperwork in fact be preparing for new paperwork responsibilities?
• Teachers now have less of a say in what is done with their professional time. Specifically, principals no longer must wait for chapters to SBO non-credit bearing advisory. Because of its class-size limits, in fact, advisory will likely be the only real C6 option for most members at schools who adopt it. Not office hours. Not IEP time.

Many of the supposed ‘gains’ in the contract were also misrepresented, somewhat blatantly, by Unity staffers. Teachers at many schools will soon learn the hard way that:

• Principals don’t have to give you a single PD that grants CTLE hours. They simply have the option to give you up to two.
• Only multi-session schools get an unassigned professional period. The majority of us (who work in single session schools) will still get 5 assigned C6 periods a week.
• No, we don’t get new ‘choices’ for C6. Rather, principals have new choices of what to put as the menu options for ‘their’ schools. As I discussed above, that will primarily be a loss for teachers where hitherto regulable options (like non-credit bearing advisory) can now be exercised without chapter consent at the expense of necessary activities like IEP writing.

Moreover, until 2027, we will be locked into a contract that did nothing to solve problems like:

• The lack of due process for untenured teachers, who can remain probationary for indefinite amounts of time.
• Lack of real recourse for teachers who are discontinued for unfair reasons. 
• The many bargainable issues that face special education teachers.
• Class sizes, which now may even be worse for teachers with new remote responsibilities.
• Massive caseloads for related service providers.

This is all disappointing, but unsurprising in the context of a union whose leadership does everything it can to pre-empt debate, sweep inconvenient facts under the rug, oversell mediocrity, and convince members that the tactics we would need to get real gains for labor shouldn’t even be an option. Still, a note: while a number of irregularities characterized the voting/mailing process, thus prompting the High School Executive Board to pre-emptively seek out chapter-specific data, the surprising turnout numbers and margin of ‘victory’ were enough to suggest that the results (ratification) would not have been different. UFC affiliates were also present during day-time portions of the count to observe what they could of the process, but didn’t see any concrete malfeasance resembling what DC37 officials were caught doing to rig a ratification vote back in the 90s.

This contract, despite its faults, is now our contract. Indeed, it will be for some time.