Facing Unity

A dirty job, but someone has to do it.

Is that us, facing the Unity Caucus? Or is it the Unity Caucus facing us? Either way, Unity is the herd. Everything they do is right, and everything we do is wrong. No one can replace them. Can Unity really be indispensable?

Do you think you’ll leave some unfillable hole when you leave? I read a poem somewhere that suggested if you think you’re indispensable, place your hand into a bucket of water. Pull it out and look at the result. None of us live forever, and none of us are indispensable.

Now don’t despair. No one’s saying you won’t be missed. But there’s also value in change. When people begin to believe they’re indispensable, they don’t think things through as they should. In the case of our union leadership, we see that Mulgrew made several awful deals on our behalf, and thought no one would notice. Last year, two concurrent elections proved he made a catastrophic miscalculation.

Since 2005, I’ve known something was seriously amiss with our leadership. Around that time, I’d just started my blog, NYC Educator. Bloomberg and Klein were out of control, and the papers were blaming us for everything, I recall a story in the Times about how we were ruining the lives of children by arranging to have President’s week off, which our suburban colleagues had for years. The Times writer, unlike every working teacher, did not know that the DOE’s alternative was keeping us in school all week for PD, or that the kids would be home regardless.

I was pretty shocked that professional writers couldn’t be bothered talking to teachers, most of whom knew the DOE plan. Very shortly thereafter, I learned our union had a contract that would lengthen our day, remove the right to grieve letters to file, send us back to lunchroom and potty patrol, and transform displaced teachers into wandering subs (among other things). To put a cherry on top, one that’s been quite costly for me, and countless others, Unity’s Randi Weingarten later reduced our TDA from 8.25% to 7%. All other city unions still get 8.25.

I was not involved in union at that point. But I began to feel that my union leadership was almost as out of touch as the Times writer. In 1993, I transferred to Francis Lewis High School from John Adams. I did this because a supervisor was penalizing me for not throwing students out of the classroom.

When I first started teaching, having no seniority whatsoever, I lost a few jobs. I went to a Queens hiring hall, and a secretary took me to a big room, filled with people in folding chairs. She said, “You see all those people? I have to get each of them a job before I can help you.” I put on a suit, walked into every office in every high school in Queens, and kept doing it until someone hired me. I figured they’d rather hire me than some unknown, unseen quantity (and I was always right).

When I called the union, they’d say, “Sure it’s tough now. But when you’re a senior teacher, we’ll take care of you.” And indeed they did, in 1993. But in 2005, they sold us out. Had I remained at Adams, I’d have become an ATR. By the time they forced everyone to reapply at Adams, I had exercised my big mouth pretty publicly. No one was calling me a bad teacher, but that wouldn’t have mattered.

There was a UFT blog at that time, called Edwize. I started commenting there. I was shocked at the responses I’d get. People labeled me ignorant, stupid, and other equally clever monickers. The contract, “scraped the skies,” proclaimed an article from one retiree-to-be, to whom Unity awarded a 50K per anum writing job. (I can only suppose that sparked his creativity.)

That’s what passes for discourse in the Unity Caucus. More recently, I see them posting AI-produced articles some of their anonymous Substacks, and even one named one. It’s not all that difficult to distinguish hackery from writing. What’s difficult is altering history. That, no matter hard they try, they cannot do.

Cops have the blue wall. We have the Unity Caucus.

Now, Amy Arundell, a person they took as their own, has walked away. A person who’s known the UFT inside and out has taken her knowledge and abandoned them. This is unprecedented. Unity has been a closed shop for sixty years. No one of much consequence walks.

You’d think there’d be some introspection. Why is this happening? What can we do better?

But I went through the Unity blogs, anonymous and otherwise. It’s the same old stuff. It’s not directed at me, for a change, so they’re shooting at anything or anyone that moves. This person sucks, that person said this, how dare they, and they should immediately jump into a rushing river or something.

I’ve been a classroom teacher most of my life. You’re always on stage, somehow, and the feedback is immediate. You know if you’re connecting, and you know if you’re bombing. Your audience is either with you, or their eyes glaze over and you’re nowhere.

So what do you do when you bomb? You pivot, and the best time is the present. But the retirees voted against Unity. The paras voted against Unity. And what have we got?

More of the same.

It’s hard to believe these people ever worked in classrooms.

There’s a big thing for the paras. A raise, or a bonus, or something. There’s a bill, but no one’s bothered to write it yet. We’re asked to sign a petition supporting the bill that does not yet exist. Mulgrew claims to have been planning it for seven months, but offers no evidence whatsoever.

In the past, we’ve been asked to vote up contracts without even having seen an MOA. In 2018 we voted on a contract that appeared fairly straightforward. There was a raise, somewhere close to cost of living, and no evidence of givebacks. Yet there, inside Appendix B, were drastic cuts to health care.

And what do they say? Unity has done this and that. No one else can do this, and no one else can do that. You’d think that Unity sat around in a circle at 52 Broadway and discovered fire. And then, there’s the predictable invective, pointed at anyone handy. At least four of their rah-rah blogs are written by people to fraidy-scared to sign their work.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there are all these voices. Sometimes they show up here. If they don’t use real names, I ban them. I find it disingenuous if you’re here trying to protect a high-paying job or second pension you won’t even tell us you’ve got.

They don’t even pretend to be civil, and they run our union. This explains a lot.

If Marianne Pizzitola says something an unelected Unity RCT leader in Florida doesn’t like, RTC Chapter Leader Bennett Fischer has to apologize, or something. After all, elected or not, she’s a UFT member, and UFT members must be respected. When a Unity member comes here and accuses me of “delusions of grandeur” for supporting Amy, that’s just fine.

They get paid more than we do. They get better pensions than we do. When Mulgrew says it will cost an extra 5K a year, per couple, to start, to stay on real Medicare, they don’t have to worry about it. They trot out two retired VPs who claim they need “the option” of real Medicare. Never mind that thousands of retirees, promised that option for free all their careers, won’t be able to afford that option.

They think they’re better than us.

Why else would they push for an option for health care for themselves that many or most city employees could not afford? How is it possible that they need the quality of real Medicare, but we don’t? I believe they also brought a cancer survivor. I empathize with cancer survivors because I’m a cancer survivor too.

But anyone can get cancer. While I would wish cancer on no one, a UFT paraprofessional could get it. A DC37 employee could get it. And it’s unlikely either could afford the upcharge to retain Medicare.

We need leadership that will go the extra mile for us. We need leadership that can imagine and realize alternatives. I’ve seen the United Federation of Teachers from many angles now, and no one works harder for members than Amy Arundell. She’s our model, and if I were in trouble, there’s absolutely no one I’d rather have on my side.

Let’s create a new culture in our union. Let’s shed ourselves of the self-serving aristocracy that would just as soon sell us out as look at us. Let’s open up UFT communication to educate and organize, rather than propagandize.

I have never been more excited to be part of a union movement. It’s high time we had A Better Contract with not only the city, but also with our union. In a few short months it will be within our grasp.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.