Paid Maternity/Paternity Leave
Last April New Action proposed that UFT members should be entitled to paid parental leave. UFT members are often shocked to learn that all they receive upon having a child is six weeks of UNPAID maternity leave. Eight months later de Blasio may be helping this to happen. But why did our union not ra
Why I can no longer support Mulgrew / Unity
By Gregory Di Stefano 33 year teacher, 46 year UFT member The last decade has seen a serious deterioration of UFT members’ rights such as: not being able to grieve unfair observations, inaccurate letters in the file, abuse by some incompetent and corrupt principals, the unfair treatment of p
Get Test Scores Out of Teacher Evaluation
New Action urges: no test scores in teacher evaluation. Unity responds by not letting members vote. At the January 11, 2016 UFT Executive Board meeting, New Action urged opposition to the use of test scores to evaluate teachers, and urged that we use the four year moratorium to lobby for a change in
New Action explains: We can no longer run with Mulgrew/Unity
Since the early 1980’s, New Action/UFT was the main opposition to Unity Caucus. In 1985, New Action leader, Michael Shulman, won the UFT High School Vice-Presidency, and served until 1987. New Action continued in opposition until early 2004. Perhaps our greatest achievement was making pay parity t
Overmanaged, Underappreciated, Stonewalled and Harassed
New Action/UFT congratulates the schools and Chapter Leaders working with collaborative, member friendly principals. Unfortunately, Chancellor Farina’s call to principals to work collaboratively with their staff is not being followed at many schools. At the January 2016 Delegate Assembly a Chapter
How Not to Fight the Friedrichs Case!
By Michael Shulman, Co-chair, New Action/UFT By now most union members have heard of the Friedrichs case before the US Supreme Court. The threat is real and in the hands of this conservative court it is almost a given that the justices will rule against all unions and eliminate dues check-off . The
What happened to Principals in Need of Improvement?
At the November 12, 2015 Delegate Assembly a member asked how the union could help his school from an abusive administrator. President Mulgrew answered saying it should be raised in consultation at the school level. If there was no relief (and how could there be!) the issue should go to the Superint
Retroactive Pay and Fairness
(from the New Action leaflet distributed at the October 2015 UFT Delegate Assembly) In a disheartening turn, after unusually harsh commentary by a teacher who is employed by the union, the Unity leadership, followed by its caucus, voted en bloc against letting the delegates debate the issue. For a
New Action announces a coalition slate with MORE for the 2016 UFT elections
New Action Caucus/UFT is the oldest opposition caucus in the United Federation of Teachers. We have a decades-long history of fighting for social justice, including initiating the campaign to divest from apartheid South Africa, moving the UFT to take a position against “stop and frisk,” and winn
Winner-Take-All is Undemocratic
The United Federation of Teachers sends hundreds of delegates to the New York State United Teachers Representative Assembly and to the American Federation of Teachers Convention. And of those hundreds of delegates, all, every one, vote exactly the same way on every issue. The UFT has Vice Presidents