New Action – UFT

New Action/UFT

…a caucus of the United Federation of Teachers

615 77^th Street, Brooklyn, New York 11209

https://newaction.wordpress.com/

              March 2022

NEW ACTION/UFT PROPOSALS FOR CONTRACT DEMANDS

1. Pay raises in line with surrounding districts
2. Maximum salary should be reached in 10 years like many other unions
3. Reduce class size in every division
4. Reduce caseloads of counselors, school psychologists, and other titles
5. No agreement to place new hires into HMOs 
6. End Fair Student Funding/Return to Unit Costing to end discrimination/harassment of veteran teachers
7. Fight the attacks on Chapter Leaders and chapter members
8. Fight abusive principals and place abusers on a UFT Watch List/Send teams into these schools
9. Reinstitute seniority transfers
10. End ATR pool by placement in vacancies
11. Work to end school segregation
12. Work to increase staff diversity
13. Restore the right to grieve letters in the file
14. Allow members to challenge principal’s judgment on observation reports
15. Remove the Danielson Framework and decouple test scores from evaluations. Reform the evaluation system to be teacher led.
16. Set penalties for administrators who repeatedly violate class size provisions

EXPOSE THE “WE DO THE WORK” SHAM OF UNITY CAUCUS

The hollow “We do the work” claim of Unity’s propaganda machine belies the fact that they have stood idly by as our conditions deteriorated.

Where was Unity when the City and MLC attempted to foist a privatized Medicare “Dis”Advantage plan on retirees. Mulgrew LED the effort to put 250,000 municipal workers on this plan. And Unity minions tried to promote this privatization as a great benefit for UFT retirees. Thanks for all your work!

Where was Unity on the health care of in-service members. In the last contract Unity supported a 2-Tier system that places new members in HIP for the first year. This was and is a disgrace. In the next contract will the City and our union agree to put new members in an HMO for the duration of their probation to pay for the $600,000,000 the UFT and MLC promised to save the City? Thanks for all your work!

Where was Unity as our members were forced onto Tier 6. It’s an opportune time to press our elected friends that we’ve helped put in office to CALL FOR IMPROVEMENTS IN THE PENSION TIERS. We’ve done it before. But Unity hasn’t made any concrete moves to fight for this. Thanks for all your work!

Where was Unity all these many years in the fight to lower class size. Yes, there were improvements we won at the City Council level but when those expired there was no real fight. There have been NO REDUCTIONS IN OVER 50 YEARS. Instead, year after year the UFT has pitted salary increases against a reduction in class size. Thanks for all your work!

Where was Unity when teacher evaluations were tied to bogus test scores. Where was Unity when evaluations became a sham. Not so long ago their leaders were arguing that teachers wanted more observations.  Thanks for all your work!

Where was Unity when our Chapter Leaders and as well as our members came under attack by abusive principals. Unity dropped the once successful “Principals in Need of Improvement” (PINI) program. We have to ask why Unity leaders eliminated this program. Thanks for all your work!

New Action/UFT is a proud member of UNITED FOR CHANGE!            

THIS APRIL VOTE THE ENTIRE UNITED FOR CHANGE SLATE   

New Action is the oldest opposition caucus in the United Federation of Teachers. Formed in the mid 1980’s, New Action has a 40- year record of accomplishments. Our history goes back as the main opposition to the Vietnam War and the struggle to pull our pension funds from companies doing business with the South African apartheid regime. New Action lead the fight for salary parity in the 1990’s. New Action led the fight against Mayor Bloomberg’s Stop and Frisk policy.

But early on we set our sights on addressing the improvement of working conditions and for a more democratic union. Up to the present day we have witnessed a continuing decline in the day to day life of UFT members. We can say, the situation has never been worse in our schools.

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK   TWITTER:@NewActionUFT   NEWACTION.ORG

Michael (Brooklyn) (646) 286-3288/ Nick (Manhattan)  (860) 922-5833/ Joel (Queens) (917 647-6923/ Greg (SI) (718) 757-4552

A. Routine Items

1. Approval of the Minutes (March 19) – All minutes (eboard and adcom) passed unanimously

Announcements: Negotiating committee will be starting at 4:30 on Wednesday, all in person, giving time for people to come from the outer boroughs. Next eboard is March, next DA is April 18th. The DA in May is now May 25th, which is not the original date.

1. Report from Districts

Rashad Brown, executive board at large, had legal plan meeting with great attendance.

Janella Hinds: Hosting 2 events next week, Tuesday April 5th, Academic High School meeting, 4:30-5:45, followed by the academic high schools award ceremony, including education, union, community, and solidarity awards. Last year’s winners will also be exited. That’s Friday, April 8th.

(Name Missed): First books event just occurred, where 12,000 books were given to many different schools in Chinatown. Lots of support.

2. President’s Report : Michael Mulgrew: Apologizes for being late, but says he’s been on meetings in Albany. Says budget, a lot of it was taken up by Buffalo Bills Stadium. Tier 6 reform discussions will be occurring all week. April 4th is now the final date of the budget, strange. Congratulate nurse chapter, settled with Northwell last Friday at 4:00 AM. Able to get contract settled and they did a great job. Thanks all involved. Now, all private sector nurse contracts are back in place. At least a year before we have to deal with another issue. On April 14th, prep is going on for Listen up – the number of teachers we have is so many that we are going to have to expand. The idea is for education leaders and policy experts to listen to teachers for what is going on and needed right now. We knew, we have a whole bunch of educators who want to do that kind of work.

Chapter leader hub goes live on Friday. Will continue to field test it to make sure all goes well, but it’s a big deal, and we’re hoping that everything goes well. It is that time of the year. We don’t have the calendar yet from the DOE, and I’m frustrated, because we need to start planning for next year now, and the DOE is taking quite a bit of time on the superintendent process, so we’ll see how that goes. Besides that, we have the NYSUT RA, and thanks all going for doing that work. It’s really tight and it’s nonstop for two days, sitting in chairs and making sure we’re representing our local in the state-wide piece. Apologizes, but has to leave.

Thanks everyone for a phenomenal chapter leader weekend. Talks about great energy and optimism, great to see how great it was. It was a well run weekend, so thanks everyone. Be well, bye.

Reports from Districts reconvenes:

Rich Mantell: April 9th is the Middle School conference in person, no remote option. Some of the classes are STEM classroom, Google Earth, CTE partnerships, loan forgiveness, morale, socio-emotional health (yoga). See you there.

Mary Vaccaro: CTLE workshops, everyone is calling. We’ve added a lot of them. Anyone on the waitlist, we’ll let you know, especially for our Apple workshops, cap being lifted to 450. In addition there are ELL credits associated if that applies to you. April 6th, Goldie Haun workshop will have workshop on SEL, free one year subscription. Many schools invited to attend. Anyone who wants to attend from eboard, we’ll get an invite out to your.

Karen Alford: Had elementary school workshops last week, was great to be back in person. Had an elementary school town hall with about 500 people online, who asked questions and heard the reports.

Tom Murphy: April 11th is next meeting for retired chapter. Will now be a regular mail letter for retirees, including for retirees who don’t have email.

C. Special Order of Business: Election Complaints

Background from LeRoy Barr: alleged misuse of union resources in election, Christina Gavin is a UFC member. We are going to review her complaint and take steps. In other instances, we have found that some Unity Caucus actions are fine, with response to use of personal accounts by UFT employee on social media. Every 3 years, we have elections. The 2022 election committee has reps from each slate, Unity and UFC (doesn’t mention how many in each). Email was sent by Christina with respect to use of media. UFT gathered more information, after which Christina amended her complaint and added additional evidence. With regard to official UFT accounts, no caucus business, email should be sent out…..with use of officer headshots from website, we say that Unity should pay a reasonable market rate for use of the photos. But recommend dismissal of the rest of the complaint.

Complaint that UFT employees use personal accounts for both UFT and caucus business, but some of these activities are not electioneering. Nothing wrong with sharing UFT information. Allegations of union employees using personal accounts to ‘electioneer’ on social media. Since personal, this is not illegal. There are also accounts that official UFT accounts should not be used for caucus purposes, and these accounts should cease being used ASAP. Some accounts are used for non-UFT purposes or caucus purposes, but this is fine. Uses of UFT and archival photos for caucus purposes, which showed caucus logos on republished UFT footage. Under LMRDA, the union is not required to stop communications to regular UFT. While it’s true that LMRDA is against using union funds for electioneering, this is not true when there is equal access. For instance, there can be a candidates forum or post in newspaper. Since anyone could have downloaded the video in Queens, anyone else could have done that, not just Unity Caucus. The same is true of the photo from the labor archives.

Use of headshots from the Unity website and campaign materials. Unity used headshots that were paid for by UFT funds. This has been ruled that one campaign’s use of photos from the website does not violate election law, because those photos are not UFT property but officer property. Still, Unity Caucus should pay a reasonable market rate for use of the headshots. President Mulgrew’s letter in support of Debra Penny for TRS Board. The allegation that Mulgrew’s praise of Debra Penny, incumbent candidate for Treasurer, and asking for signatures from all chapter leaders. The 3 teacher members serve 3 year terms, and it’s Debra Penny’s turn for an election. The DA voted overwhelmingly in support. Only after this resolution did Michael Mulgrew send the letter in support. The DOL has found this regular work of the union to be permissable during officer election season. The letter didn’t endorse Penny for UFT Treasurer, so the complaint is denied. The letter is fine.

Union representatives were found to enter different schools during UFT work hours and distributed flyers. Winnie Thompson sent caucus business from her UFT account. This matter has been addressed. And another DR allegedly dropped off caucus pamphlets to a CL in the parking lot. The other DRs deny the evidence, but they should be reminded not to do it.

Michael Sill: Only members of the eboard may debate, but Christina Gavin will be given an opportunity to speak for 3 minutes.

Christina Gavin: Our union has been in existence since 1960. The DOL has regulations, set in 1959, for election guidelines. Our union should be upholding federal labor laws. These labor laws underline the fiber of our union, but we see repeated violations. Mr. Barr and Ms. Norton take exemption and want to interpret regulations and Carl Cambria’s reminder to interpret guidelines in another way. It’s my right to appeal that. Unity Caucus has violated labor law as well as Carl Cambria’s email to them that explicitly reminded on much of what was discussed above. Cambria later said he was amending his original email. But, when you write a rule, that is what you need to be bound by. I look forward to seeing what AFT will say of this matter.

Michael Sill: Do we accept the report? No debate. Motion passes unanimously.

Barr: Ballots on April 8th. Reminds everyone to vote. Motion to adjourn.

I’m livid. Absolutely livid. I’m sitting in my hotel room in Tarrytown after a full day at the chapter leader weekend. I’m typing this on a phone, because I didn’t think I’d need to bring my laptop to blog.

Why am I livid? I was prepared for a little bit of electioneering when I got here. So when Anthony Harmon repeatedly talked about Michael Mulgrew as if he was a saint and made sure to drop multiple lines of the unity slogan “doing the work,” just after thousands of teachers received unity flyers in the mail, I jotted it down, but that’s not why I’m mad.

I’m mad, because I just saw how low the Unity led UFT is willing to go to silence members who they perceive as even remotely critical. When Mulgrew got up to give his overly long presidential address, Jane Rubio immediately got in line so that she would have a chance to ask a question. At the last event, she also got in line very early, but Michael Mulgrew filibustered his answers to the other questions and Jane never got a chance to speak. This time he couldn’t get away with that, because she was right there in front of the first mic, and had been standing for over a half an hour for the chance to speak.

When she got her chance, Jane asked a reasonable question, and in a completely reasonable way without reference to any caucus or the election. She simply asked why the president’s reports were so long at the delegate assemblies, citing the fact that only 1.5 resolutions have been passed a month since December of 2020, and noting that if the president spoke for less than an hour, maybe we could get to that business. Immediately, staffers and unity members began to shout her down. Then they cut the mic. There were audible attacks made on Jane and chants of “UFT,” as if Jane, a first-year chapter leader from the Bronx, who was donating her time to learn more about the contract so that she could better help her members, wasn’t even a member of the union that she does so much work to represent.

Eventually the mic went back on. Mulgrew responded that delegate assemblies are part debate but also part president’s report. He claimed that during a pandemic president reports simply have to be longer. Then he scolded that if we want to get political, there are shenanigans at the DA, implying that UFC, who spoke for a total of maybe 5 minutes at the DA, mostly to try and extend the meeting so that there could be debate, was the real problem. The problem, in other words, is that we won’t shut up completely and let Unity talk at us.

Keep in mind that in events like this, a significant percentage of the room is staff. There are district reps, officers, chapter delegates, and other staffers who are positioned both in clusters of UFT employees and also interspersed at tables with teachers. So after Michael Mulgrew spoke, responding to the woman he had just silenced, who his staff had literally cut the mic of so that she would stop making a point that didn’t paint him as god’s gift to teachers, the room erupted in applause. Now this is a chapter leader weekend. Most of the chapter leaders here are chapter leaders for the first time. They aren’t members of a caucus. Like me, when I was a first year chapter leader, they likely have no idea that every single person with a UFT job in this room must be a member of Michael Mulgrew’s caucus. And that’s why this is a campaign event. Because Unity Caucus can attack a female chapter leader who simply wants to know why no resolutions are ever discussed at the DA, put on the Unity laugh track after Mulgrew speaks, and make independents think if the majority of room is clapping, I guess I should too.

If Michael Mulgrew is going to turn dues-funded events like this into tyrannical displays of his one party caucus, the least he could do is agree to a debate with Camille Eterno, so our union can see the other side. But there’s only room for one person in the Michael Mulgrew show, and that’s Michael Mulgrew (and his Unity laugh track).