New Action – UFT

This blog predicted months ago that Mulgrew would try to rush a contract ratification vote. “If we rush a bad contract, after all, we can get limited money quick. Summer is around the corner –a tempting time to dangle a few bucks in front of teachers and say ‘sure, we didn’t fix any working conditions, but wouldn’t you rather have this money now than wait until Fall to renegotiate?” At one point, UFT leadership threw us all off by announcing at what seemed like the last possible moment that a contract looked unlikely.

At that point, I offered the possibility that there might still be a contract, but considered the terms under which that might happen. “There is still time, of course. Maybe UFT leadership will get a last-minute agreement finalized this weekend. But under these circumstances, how good could it be? With such harsh wording in the DA email, isn’t it implicit that there’s no way we’re close to a good deal – one which would come close to meeting UFC’s 5 core demands? I sincerely doubt it.”

Then, at what was clearly past the last possible moment, Mulgrew switched gears, calling emergency meetings and presenting us with a PowerPoint with a ‘yes vote’ leaning version of a new TA. He was in sell mode, just days after saying a deal wasn’t likely at all.

To be sure, the deal wasn’t good. New Action, along with all the opposition caucuses, recommends a no vote. There are issues here: givebacks on C6, portions of income that are unpensionable, a new precedent of disciplinary action without due process at principal’s discretion (for PE), no real gains in places we expected them like special education, wage increases below the nonunionized average, no class size limits written in for virtual instruction. And that’s even without touching the mystery of healthcare. These are reasons to vote no, especially because previous no votes have gone better for us.  We’ve always done better renegotiating after voting no – every time.

The Carrot

But those givebacks are getting lost in UFT-Unity ‘yes vote’ propaganda that often obfuscates the cuts. In recent viral postings on social media, for instance, members have erroneously claimed things like ‘we all get a self directed c6’ (we only do if we are in multi-session schools)’ or that ‘we now get two PDs a month that confer CTLE hours’ (we don’t – we get up to two PDs that do that – the minimum is still zero). There is tons of misinformation going around, much of it from members of Unity, who claim that members should only trust what UFT leadership says. I tell readers this, check anything you read/hear, including information published in this blog, against the actual MOA.

The Stick

In addition to a carrot that is being touted as much better than it actually is, we’re also getting the stick. Even we didn’t think that UFT leadership would stoop to the level of holding the specter of the 2023-2024 school year against us, playing ‘chicken’ with no votes by holding the SBO vote hostage. See this at the disclaimer of all SBO votes—which most schools are conducting simultaneously with the contract vote.

“I understand that this proposed SBO is subject to the ratification of the 2023 MOA. If the 2023 MOA is not ratified, I understand that the default workday will be 6 hours and 20 minutes followed by 37.5 minutes of small group instruction Monday – Thursday as per Article 6a. The school day shall not begin before 8:00am or end after 3:45 pm.”

I wonder why Mulgrew et al didn’t plan for contingency SBOs or a contingency Pilot workday in the event that the contract did not go through?

The Voting Falls Apart

As our members are rushed through a ratification process, we have multiple problems occurring. (1) They are being given information that is inaccurate or misleading; (2) they are being threatened with 37.5 if the contract doesn’t go through; (3) they are being rushed to vote before they fully understand the details of the contract; and finally (4) the voting process itself is falling apart.

As Chapter Leaders already know, there were issues with the mailing envelopes that were sent out. UFT central responded by emailing out labels to print themselves (from where, UFT business from DOE printers?). There’s also confusion about who is voting from chapters and who has to wait to receive ballots in the mail. Then there’s the problem of UFT staffers telling many chapter leaders they must have the contract vote all on the same day. What happens to members who aren’t there that day, because, say, they’re attending their child’s graduation?

The bottom line is this: the process is falling apart, because it is being rushed. There’s language that needs to be changed. There are people who won’t be able to vote. And there are votes that were sent in that may be returned by the post office. This is a problem.

Mulgrew, our contract ratification process is in jeopardy. Given that UFT leadership knows this, what’s the rush?

Join the UFT’s High School Executive Board, which includes members affiliated with New Action/UFT, Solidarity, MORE, and ICE-UFT, at 7:30 PM for a panel on why all of our caucuses agree/concur: voting no gets us a better deal. Register here.

New Action Caucus has gone over the good, bad, and middling parts of the 2022-2027 tentative UFT agreement. Ultimately, we agreed that this is a contract members would be better off voting ‘no’ on.

Largely, our decision came down to sub-inflation wage ‘increases,’  including a disappointing new precedent of converting a percentage of our pay into unpensionable bonuses, as well big unanswered questions on healthcare. But we also agreed that this contract draft is disappointing in other ways that could be corrected by going back to the negotiating table. It’s not just that we didn’t meet a single of the 5 demands released by New Action in collaboration with the rest of the United for Change coalition, not to mention the demands of our larger caucus-specific list. It’s that we don’t see improvements even in places that we expected – such as special education, where we had implicit leverage but inexplicitly failed to make any major gains. It’s that one of our only workplace wins–the ability for teachers/paraprofessionals to work from home for parent engagement time–is conditional on new micromanagement and the ability for principals to take that ‘privilege’ away at a moment’s notice, without due process (a troubling new precedent).

Sifting Through the Propaganda

Of course, members may or may not take New Action’s advice to vote no. But, it’s key that in making their own decision, chapters read through the actual MOU and have meaningful discussions on the language within. Be wary about trusting outside sources without fact checking. UFT-Unity has sent out tons of propaganda, sometimes misleading members in a way that can be dangerous in the context of a rushed vote. For instance, here, Unity falsely implies that all members will benefit from a new stipulation that “one professional period each week will be converted to OPW.” They omit a key detail: this is only true in multi-session schools (see page 4 of the TA). The majority of teachers, who work in single-session schools, will not get the contractual right to a self-directed C6 period. Multi-session schools probably only get this, by the way, because they get significantly less remote parental engagement time – just 80 minutes a month (single session schools would get 220). Additionally, the UFT PowerPoint, which is being turnkeyed throughout the City, leaves out key details, such as the aforementioned clause about the right for principals to take away remote privileges without due process.

Case Study: A Win that Probably Isn’t Really a Win at Most Schools

In discussing the contract together as a caucus, we’ve also been able to notice other problems we almost missed individually while rushing to read through the fine print during this arbitrarily brief ratification process. One of those problems, is the changing language for our professional period. Unity has called the updated C6 menu a win, and at first glance, it seems like that’s the case. Teachers now would have 14 new possible options in addition to what was there previously. There are some new options here that many teachers would probably love – such as office hours. Take a look:

There’s just one problem: your principal doesn’t have to offer any of the options that you like. All they must do is let the UFT Chapter Leader ‘consult’ on what options should be offered along with how many slots should be available. And make no mistake: consult does not mean the same thing as approve. A principal may well end up vetoing your UFT chapter’s wishes. And that means we need to zero in on some of the options that give us pause:

• Advisory: A lot of UFT members do like advisory – a period of non-academic instructional time with a smaller group that ranges in practice from an indoor ‘recess’ to a period of dedicated socio-emotional instruction. Many chapters, however, do not like advisory. They see it as an extra period of instruction without any additional preparation time. Up until now, chapters who did not want advisory, have been able to defeat it, because it previously had to be SBOd. Now, advisory does not have to be SBOd. Moreover, principals who opt to offer advisory as a school-wide practice will end up having to assign almost every teacher to advisory, because advisory classrooms cannot exceed 10 students. That could spell disaster for many, such as special education teachers who rely on C6 time to write IEPs. While the new contract would offer guidance that IEP-writing special education teachers should get time to write IEPs or coplan during their C6, guidance is non-binding. In many schools, those SPED teachers would likely be pulled from doing their paperwork and made to work on advisory instead. This situation is far more likely than every teacher getting office hours.
• Curriculum mapping: Similarly, we should pause at the the addition of ‘curriculum maps’ as an option. I see this not so much as a C6 option that many will get full-time, but one which will be forced onto teachers in schools that do an SBO to split their C6. This is a big deal, because previously, making teachers write curriculum maps would have been a violation of the contract. The new precedent to allow for them in a C6 context, will likely spell the general addition of them to teachers’ plates.

This case study shows just one example of why it’s important to thoroughly analyze contractual details. In a rushed vote like this one, it’s easy to get lost in the promotional materials. We get thrown off by possibilities like ‘office hours,’ when we don’t look at the language in context. In context, our new C6 language is frankly more likely to do harm to teachers than to add any benefit. It’s something that we should renegotiate before approving.

Conclusion:

Indeed, with reduced inflation-adjusted pay and implicit but mysterious healthcare givebacks, the rest of the contract comes down to distracting perks that themselves have red tape or hidden givebacks. In short, this contract could be better. New Action advises: we should vote no and go back to the negotiating table.