New Action – UFT

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 against the bus companies that employ them. Chancellor Banks touts contingency plans being prepared by NYC Public Schools to minimize disruptions, without offering specifics or outlining expectations for unionized staff including members of the UFT, CSA, and DC37. We also have not yet heard from the UFT regarding how we plan to respond to a striking union within our school system. 

While we are currently dealing in the hypothetical, why have we not heard from the major unions involved? What are our responsibilities to a striking union as members of unions ourselves? We must be careful not to veer into the territory of crossing a picket line when a strike impacts our own work sites. Recently, the United Teachers of Los Angeles struck in solidarity with the Local 99 chapter of the Service Employees International Union. In fairness, this is not entirely analogous to our situation. New York State’s Taylor Law is incredibly punitive towards striking public sector unions. ATU Local 1181 is not a public sector union, nor is it as directly connected as the Los Angeles unions. Yet, that does not mean we have no responsibilities to our bus drivers. We know how hard they work and the importance of their labor in safely transporting our students, often through difficult streets and before the sun rises, for little compensation. Their grievances are real and they deserve our solidarity. 

So how cooperative should unionized staff be, and how can we stand in solidarity with ATU Local 1181 while respecting our contractual duties and maintaining the safety of our students? Where is the line between our duties as educators and our duties as unionists?

This summer, we witnessed members of both the AFT and UFT join the picket lines in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA and the WGA. Solidarity is a hallmark of the American labor movement and something all unions rely on when they are forced by the employer to undergo a strike. We have shown solidarity with SAG-AFTRA and the WGA, as we should. But those strikes are easy for us to support, as they don’t directly impact our own labor. How can we show solidarity with ATU Local 1181 should they require it of us? What are the plans, and how can we act should there be a bus driver strike this school year? We remain hopeful that we will hear from the concerned unions soon. 

UFT leadership, we’re waiting.

-Submitted by a concerned New Action member

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 ‘political’ and claimed, erroneously, that DC37’s sub-inflation monstrosity of a pattern was ‘competitive.’ A few Unity members even called 3ish percent per year a ‘win’ because–hey, at least it’s better than the 1ish percent increases politicians floated absurdly before the pattern was established. When we started to see teachers unions in places like LA and Oakland establish much better pay increase rates than our own, some Unity members pointed out that we still have higher salaries than them here in New York.

But do we?

It turns out that, no, we don’t. Just as Unity doesn’t want us to think about inflation, it appears they also don’t want us to factor in cost of living. Especially for those of us dealing with market-rate rents in Manhattan and Brooklyn, or mortgages in many (most?) municipalities across Long Island, New Jersey, or Westchester, we actually make substantially less than our peers in California when adjusted for cost of living. There are a few different cost-of-living indexes we can use to compare cities, each with their own pros and cons. I ended up going with one that compares Oakland, Los Angeles, and New York as entire city-units rather than dividing them up into sub-units. Here are some interesting findings:

• In Oakland, first-year teachers starting with a minimum differential make $62,695.65 a year and top out at $109,878.92 (maximum differential). However, adjusted for a New York City cost of living, this would be the equivalent of $97,273 and $170,478, respectively. That, notably, is not the salary range for NYC teachers, who, will range from making $62,092 – $132,517 a year starting in September, 2023, excluding bonuses and mid-year adjustments. Both teachers would receive premium-free medical care.
• In Los Angeles, which just approved a three year contract with 21% raises over 3 years, the wages will be $69,000 to $122,000 by the end of that deal. That’s the equivalent of $111,753 to $197,592 in NYC, but our wages even after five years in the latest UFT contract fall tens of thousands of dollars less than this. Yes, medical care is still premium free for LA teachers.

Now, I acknowledge that other methodologies may support different numbers. I also acknowledge that, sure, if you compared the cost of living in Oakland and LA to just a few neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx, Suffolk County, or Yonkers, you might find that cost-of-living evened out. But, that’s geographically unrealistic, not to mention irrational given that the same arguments could likely be made for specific areas of LA and Oakland.

The bottom line is this: we as a union need to factor in inflation into our pay increases. And we need to be honest that $1 in NYC does not go as far as it does even in other expensive cities. Our pay is, when adjusted for where we live, much lower than it is in cities where teachers unions actually fight for decent pay and working conditions. It’s due time for us to start fighting to get the pay we deserve.

-Nick Bacon, New Action Co-chair and UFT Executive Board Member