New Action – UFT

The Unity-led UFT has finally let a ‘select group’ of members learn their negotiating strategy, and it’s not exactly 3-D chess. Now, all of this was said at a CAT team meeting, with over 1,000 unknown attendees, none of whom had to prove their identity to get in. There were no NDAs for this – it was public – so I have no qualms about sharing. In fact, I feel obligated to do so, as most of us who were formally invited to register and attend—including me—were never let in. Indeed, most of us who wanted to hear the news were forced to attend ‘wildcat’ zooms to have the meeting ‘illegally’ streamed to us. The UFT, for some reason, only allowed 1,000 slots to disclose our next contract action steps – even though there are 1,859 DOE schools.

It appears that UFT Leadership sent out that absurd Friday email—the one that scared us into thinking we might be going back to teaching 37.5 extra minutes, 4x a week (150 minutes total)—as a negotiating strategy. You see, they think that the DOE doesn’t want us to do the free small group instruction – that they’d prefer having 150 minutes worth of weekly PDs, parent engagement, and OPW (as we have now). And so, forcing the City to possibly have to accept the old 37.5 option instead would put them in a bind. UFT leadership thinks the DOE hates this option so much that they’d prefer a new ‘third’ option, Now we don’t have actual details of what that ‘third’ option is, but UFT leadership is telling us that it would repurpose the 150 minutes in a way that gives teachers more freedom over its use. The problem with this strategy is it rests on the DOE not wanting us to tutor 37.5 extra minutes a day 4x a week. It rests on them preferring that teachers instead get that time for themselves. And finally – it rests on us—UFT members—being OK with losing dedicated OPW and parent engagement time and having to do 150 minutes of tutoring a week if our ‘strategy’ fails.

So, as you can probably gather, I’m skeptical that UFT leadership is right that the DOE doesn’t want the 37.5 option. We know that the City has suggested they want longer school days and a longer school year. They already released a calendar with 5 extra school days. And now the UFT is handing them over a longer school day. In the minds of UFT leadership, the DOE would prefer taking that time and giving it back to teachers to use as they see fit. Does that make sense to you? Would the DOE prefer giving teachers more time to instead getting longer school days and making tutoring part of the contractual work day (no more per session)? It doesn’t make sense to me.

But let’s say UFT leadership is right, and the DOE doesn’t particularly want the 37.5 option. Are they sure they want it less than teachers? Because teachers may not like weekly PDs, but they certainly like having OPW time. And the DOE may not love losing weekly PDs and dedicated times to have teachers do their pet projects, but it will save them a ton of money on consultants, and I’m sure most principals will find a workaround for key PDs and projects anyways. In fact, the primary work-around would probably involve teachers losing their preps. That’s right – under the 37.5 option, teachers would lose time to themselves, as many principals would likely require them to get the same stuff done that we currently do during PDs/PE/OPW time. Now we’d just have to get all that done during our already limited prep times. And that means the UFT is playing a very risky game of chicken we’re likely going to lose, one way or another.

The worst part is, we aren’t playing this game of chicken for most of the key issues that matter to us – things like money and healthcare. Yes, one of the things that matters to us is control over our time. But paradoxically, this game of chicken may lose us the little time we have. And wasting our time on a Friday night brainstorming how to ‘win’ this game of chicken—a game that none of us asked for—by wearing the right amount of blue clothing does not exactly bring me any confidence.

A reminder to all – United for Change has listed five big demands. It’s looking less and less likely that this contract, if we even get one before summer, will meet them.

Inflation is out of control. Educators, who have never made enough to begin with, know this acutely. We feel it while stocking up at the grocery store and while searching for even the most modest apartments. We feel it while trying to buy a used car or while saving for the college education of our children. Everything costs more, except apparently the labor of educators. That’s why “fair pay with raises we deserve and pay parity” is the first of United for Change’s big 5 contract demands. 

We can turn to the mayor himself to paint a picture of the gravity of our financial situation. In 2007, when then NY-Senator Eric Adams gave his infamous “Show me the money” speech, he told an audience of New Yorkers that $79 thousand isn’t enough to live on. Flash forward almost two decades later and that same figure is worth $115,000 – almost the top salary for DOE teachers ($128,657 with a Masters +30). Starting teachers today make $61,847, worth only $42,271 in 2007 dollars. That’s about half the figure Adams was calling poverty wages. And, because it takes teachers twenty-two years to reach top salary—(police, in sharp contrast, make theirs after 5 ½)—it takes new teachers decades to make a reasonable wage. For paraprofessionals, the situation is even more bleak. With starting paras making $27,920 – but a fourth of Adams’s poverty figure in 2007 dollars ($19,083), and with senior paras never exceeding the wages of first year teachers, career-long paraprofessionals never make close to a living wage.

Today, Adams is on the other side of the negotiating table. While he and Chancellor Banks hire each other’s romantic partners to make absurd salaries of which New York UFT members could only dream, all Adams is likely to offer us is a measly 3% to 3.5% increase per year. 

Yet, Mulgrew’s Unity-led UFT has told us to accept the pattern. Indeed, when it was being set, they did nothing to stop it. At contract meetings, they’ve told us that asking for cost-of-living adjustments is ‘political’ – that it doesn’t necessarily match how unions negotiate salary increases. At the Brooklyn contract rally of May 24^th, chants of ‘3% is not enough!’ were suppressed by union leaders making salaries of $200,000 and $300,000+. ‘Stay on message!’ they countered, redirecting rank-and-file unionists to demand vague changes to working conditions. 

Easy for them to say. Yes, we need changes to working conditions. But we also need to survive. Inflation is astronomical. Social Security adjusted their COLA increases at 5.9% for 2022 and 8.7% for 2023. And yet for New York City municipal workers, we’re likely to get a pay increase lower than the mostly non-unionized national average. But, in cities where unions fight, raises are far higher. Los Angeles, for instance, whose teacher union does not argue that its members should lack the right to strike, just got 21% increases over a three year period. We don’t have to accept 16.21% over five years (roughly 3% per year), because we know we’re worth more than that.

We can do better. We can vote no, regroup, use real union negotiating tactics to fight for the raises we deserve, and get a contract worth a yes vote.