Cruising the Unity Posts

They might make 185K a year, or more, have two pensions, and never set foot in a classroom, but only THEY know what's best for YOU.

Sometimes, I read Unity stuff. It isn’t all anonymous. There’s a video out there somewhere of a Unity member just casually chatting with us as he rakes his lawn (in February). Someone sent me an anonymous written piece a few days ago. It was all about me, but curiously devoid of content. It addressed absolutely nothing I’d written, ever. It reminded me of Animal Farm, when the animals chanted, “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

The article looked like someone fed, “Mulgrew good, Goldstein bad,” into AI and asked it to produce a few hundred words on the topic. I guess it was an argument, sort of. And yet, when I learn that UFT employees are actively lobbying against Intro 1096-2024, I wonder how they muster the audacity to defend Mulgrew. (And is it only me, or is there something disturbing about educators needing AI to write?)

It’s one thing to say you oppose Medicare Advantage for retirees. On the Unity columns, they discuss this as though it’s a done deal. Mulgrew opposes it, and therefore it will never happen. He hath spoken That would be one incredible feat of will. It would be all the more remarkable because technically the UFT is part of an amicus brief against us in a lawsuit seeking to dump us into an Aetna plan. Also they seem to be lobbying against our efforts to protect real Medicare. I’m not sure how you reconcile that.

I guess, though, if I had a job at UFT, and cared only about my job at UFT, and did not worry one whit about my colleagues, I might defend Mulgrew too. After all, I hear top UFT folk are threatening employees, saying they will all lose their jobs if ABC wins. Perhaps, if that were my only motivation, and I were sufficiently terrified of Mulgrew’s wrath, I’d sit down and write columns about it (or at least tell AI to do it for me). I’ll tell you, though—once I started speaking with retirees, once I fully understood what MA was, and how it compared to Medicare, I was off that Unity bus forever.

It’s ironic, because ABC does not plan a wholesale purge at UFT. We know the business of the union needs to continue uninterrupted, and we don’t feel your affiliation with Unity automatically means you don’t know how to do your job. However, we also believe folks like district reps, and perhaps borough reps, should be elected rather than appointed.

Being elected means DRs will reflect the will of members, rather than bosses. If you aren’t up for that, you should find a job more suited to your talents. We ought not to be electing bosses in the first place. We ought to be electing representatives who will carry out the will of the members. We ought not to have DRs instructing us, but rather supporting us.

I read another anonymous Unity blog a few days ago that answered this piece about ABC, yet really didn’t. Sure, says the anonymous poster, we don’t let the high school teachers select their own VP, but that’s a benefit. Sure you can’t get anyone on the phone at UFT anymore, but that’s fine too. And here’s another thing—aside from claiming only they can do this work, they’re largely reactive. We need representation that’s proactive—folks who can devise argument (as opposed to logical fallacy).

Another suggested our idea to reform the Municipal Labor Committee is improper. As constituted now, for at least ten years the MLC has focused largely on diminishing our health care. It’s negotiated savings for the city to fund our contracts, whether or not they even met cost of living. The MLC might unite and agree on a minimum acceptable pattern, which might avoid the effective salary cuts contained in the last pattern.

If inflation outpaces compensation increases, as it did last time, we’re working for less. That’s unacceptable.

It’s certainly the prerogative of Unity to say the MLC is not for protecting our salaries. They can say it’s never been done that way (though I’ve heard otherwise). It doesn’t matter, though. If we can do better by members, we absolutely should. Maybe Unity has forgotten losing two concurrent elections in landslides, but that’s a direct result of disregarding members.

We have comp-time rules that require rotation so that people get a chance to have a comp-time position in their career. Our union literally negotiated, in schools, that experience can’t be the sole factor. Despite this, when they are up against the wall, all they want to say is they’re the ones with the experience, and no one else can ever do these jobs. You’d think that no one could teach or learn anything. That a peculiar point of view for a union largely consisting of teachers.

These non-Unity folks don’t understand, they say. Sometimes you have to wait 60 years for reasonable class sizes, watch various attempts fail, and hope it works next time. Sometimes, you vote down a contract, like OT/ PT did. Your union president, rather than renegotiate, which is his frigging job, hands it back unaltered and says something like, “Take it or leave it.”

Sometimes you go 55 years, like the paras did, and no one considers that you can’t live on that salary. Your president says something like, “I have a bill that’s not written yet, that may or may not pass, that won’t help when you retire, but vote for me and hope for the best.”

I could probably write things like that. You know, slow and steady wins the race. Sure, your supervisor is insane, but maybe she’ll retire in eight years. You can keep those panic attacks to a minimum until then, can’t you? Sure, that one teacher had a massive coronary outside room 139, but that doesn’t happen to everyone. Those gosh darn folks at ABC don’t understand what hard work it is to come up with excuses for why we agreed to scripted lessons when every teacher on earth knows why they can’t work.

But hey, you make mistakes. You wouldn’t know it, though, to listen to Michael Mulgrew.

Despite what the Unity bloggers claim, Mulgrew has never admitted wrongdoing in the Medicare Advantage debacle that cost him the Retired Teachers Chapter.

In fact, he continues to deny there is any fault with the inferior Aetna plan.

That’s characteristic of dictators, not union leaders. Michael Mulgrew is not the UFT. We are. It’s beyond time to take it back. It’s beyond time we empower ourselves, and do what union does. No more waiting for the Word of Michael Mulgrew. ABC, in stark contrast to the caucuses, believes in democracy.

We will journey together, and recreate our union into what it should always have been—a member-driven agency to protect our health care, improve our workplaces, and make sure compensation keeps up with or outpaces inflation.

Join us as a convention delegate!