Maximizing Democracy

Awakening our great union

If you follow this column at all, you know I’m focused on replacing our current leadership. For my money, they’re ineffective and toxic. I’ll get into the nuts and bolts a little later. But we see and live associated symptoms every day.

Many educators want to keep our heads down. We don’t want to get involved. We want to come in, do our jobs, and go home. That’s a lofty ambition for some teachers, as we drag home stacks of papers, planning, and wade through all manner of uncompensated directives.

I don’t know about you, but I hate doing meaningless tasks to satisfy the ever-shifting needs of multi-level administrators. I’ve spent decades concocting ways to avoid or evade them. Yet somehow, there’s always one more thing sneaking up on us.

We feel overwhelmed, and can’t deal with one more thing. That one more thing we can’t do often includes activism. Of course, our current leadership can’t be bothered promoting activism. That’s why they send the same dozen staffers here and there, and pretend UFT is involved. Unity is terrified of activating our union. If UFT were really involved, we’d see through leadership as readily as Dorothy saw that man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz.

We’ve got to change that culture. We’ve got to wake up, along with our brother and sister unionists. As educators, we are role models. We have aspirations for the kids we serve. If we’re afraid to express ourselves, our students will recognize that, and perhaps emulate that fear. We can do better. A stumbling block is longstanding union leaders who see no value in democracy, and care only about their own power.

One symptom is our miserable union voting process. We may only vote by mail. That’s outdated and so ineffective that three quarters of membership doesn’t vote at all.

I’m retired, and I don’t visit a mailbox more than a handful of times in a year. I imagine younger educators use them even less. As chapter leader, members would complain to me about leadership. I told them their best remedy was to vote. Despite that, the ballots would hang on their refrigerators well past their expiration dates. Electronic voting is easier. Unity resists it because they don’t believe voters should pick leaders. They seem to prefer that leaders pick voters.

If you’re a UFT representative of any stripe, you’re almost certainly a member of the elite, invitation-only Unity Caucus. As a Unity member, you may be terrified that ABC will win the next election, fire you, and send you back to (Gasp!) work in a classroom. While that’s not, in fact, a goal of ABC, we don’t think anyone should fear the classroom. More importantly, we don’t believe any member should fear union leadership. That’s counter-intuitive, but we’ve had so little exposure to real unionism that we take it for granted.

We think union employees should answer to the membership, not the leadership. We find it unconscionable that Unity bosses should threaten employees with termination if they lose the election. We find it unconscionable that the UFT President fires people based on his whims. Ask Bennett Fischer, fired for disagreeing with Mulgrew. Ask Chad Hamilton, fired for dropping out of Unity.

As a chapter leader, I protected jobs. I let principals know about rules, and bent over backward to enforce them. I gave members advice about how to avoid losing jobs, and saved a few of them. Honestly—I didn’t always like everyone I represented. But it was my job to make sure admin followed the rules, and to enforce said rules regardless. I didn’t run for and win a leadership position to fire people simply because they didn’t agree with me.

Another symptom is the selection process for District Representatives. At one point, chapter leaders voted for District Reps. That was better than the current process, where the bosses pick whoever they wish. The late James Eterno would’ve made a great District Rep. He never got the chance because he wasn’t Unity. Sure they let him go for interviews. But neither James nor anyone else really believed he was going to get the job.

At the very least, the process of having chapter leaders elect District Representatives should be restored. Maybe the vote should go directly to district membership. Maybe borough reps should be elected too. Every time we empower members, we let them know their voices matter. Conversely, every time we remove member choices, we let them know they don’t matter.

A third symptom is the deliberate disenfranchisement of high school teachers. Way back when I started teaching (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) we elected a non-Unity High School Vice-President. Who the hell did we think we were? Unity held a do-over election, on what basis I have no idea, and lost by an even wider margin. This displeased our Unity overlords.

When Unity managed to regain total control, they devised a remedy for this unwelcome threat. They determined that all divisions (elementary, middle school, high school) would vote for all Vice-Presidents. Since elementary and middle school tended to vote overwhelmingly for Unity, they effectively deprived HS teachers of our voice and vote. Unity lost two of the last three high school elections, yet their candidate won the HS Vice Presidency both times.

How is it that Bennett Fischer, RTC Chapter Leader, needs to have his email approved by leadership? That’s ridiculous. I could understand if they wanted to edit things to make them better, to catch typos, or perhaps to fact-check. But approving the message of an elected leader? That’s beyond the pale. Unity did the same thing to former OT/PT Chapter Leader Melissa Williams, and managed to abuse her so much she left the job.

What the hell sort of leadership is that?

This need for control is rooted not merely in self-indulgence, but perhaps even moreso in lack of fundamental competence. Michael Mulgrew and his Very Smart People have been snookered by the city on a regular basis for years now.

Who sorely depletes the health stabilization fund in order to get money we were due four years ago four years from now? Who tosses in a crap pattern for the whole city, for years to come? Who not only sells out the retirees, but also agrees to give away 600 million dollars a year, in perpetuity, for a three year contract? That, of course, would be Michael Mulgrew and all Unity’s Very Smart People.

Why would a union leader come to us and ask us to reduce the minimum the city can pay toward our health care when we retire? Yet Michael Mulgrew did that very thing. Back in 2022, I wrote:

So let's see if I've got this straight. If we don't agree that retirees must pay $5,000 a year per couple to retain the care they've had forever, in-service members will have to pay $1500 a year. It's kind of hard to see the union in that. In fact, it appears we're pitting one section of the union against another.

That’s not what union is for. A competent union leader would know that in her bones. It’s become a long-cherished goal of mine to elect such a leader. I’ve had a lot of experience with people who value their own power over democracy, and it’s been more than enough. It’s particularly egregious with Very Smart People who can’t negotiate their way out of a paper bag.

There are a lot of things Michael Mulgrew says that aren’t true. For example, when he said in-service members would pay $1500 annual premiums if we didn’t charge retirees $2500 premiums, that’s proven to be untrue. But not all the things he says are untrue.

For example, when Michael Mulgrew and Unity’s Very Smart People tell us some awful deal is the best they could do, believe them. When they allow the city to pay what they owe us eight years late with no interest whatsoever, it was the best they could do. When they say they needed to cut in-service health care by 10%, it was the best they could do. When they say they needed to either dump retirees into Medicare Advantage, or charge them $2500 a year to retain what they had, it was the best they could do.

It’s the best they can do, but it’s certainly not the best we can do.

Make no mistake—leadership should be coming to us for direction, not the other way around. Leaders who choose to exercise their selfish caprices while ignoring those who placed them in office are unfit. They need to be removed with all due haste.

Good leaders reflect the wishes and needs of those who elect them. That’s why I’m working for A Better Contract, both with the city and our leadership.