Michael Mulgrew, Isolationist

UFT is an island unto itself, and we need to keep out the riff raff.

Unity is flailing. Having failed to represent our interests, having lost the retirees, and having lost the paraprofessionals, they’re reduced to playing strict parent. You may only associate with this person. You’re not allowed to play with that person. They treat us like recalcitrant children.

It’s a very odd move. UFT Retirees en masse have chosen to align with Marianne Pizzitola and NYC Retirees. We’ve done that because Marianne’s organization, in stark contrast to UFT Big Shots, actually battles to protect our health care. While Unity says they now oppose the Medicare Advantage scheme they battled for years to dump us into, NYC Retirees fight to block the program in court. They take to the streets and protest. They get right up in the faces of those who oppose us.

Unity’s response doesn’t seem remotely reasonable, but the voices in their heads seem to be telling them that electoral losses are no fault of their own. It’s those other people, those interlopers, and their union interference. Mulgrew, who’s accused those of us who wish to protect our health care of spouting fairy tales, of spewing lies, of being conspiracy theorists, cannot conceive any of this is his fault.

Here’s the thing, though—the real conspiracy theorists are our union bosses, spouting unhinged directives to the Unity faithful. They didn’t lose. Union interference twisted our fragile minds. They say that this must stop. So, rather than do anything to support members, they attribute their problems to associating with undesirables.

Working with others, evidently, to make working conditions better constitutes union interference. This must stop at any cost. Okay. Let’s take their resolution to its logical conclusions.

To start, we’d better stop talking to parents, because who the hell do they think they are? They aren’t UFT. If retirees can’t align with NYC Retirees, the union can’t align with parents. Working for common cause is out. Only UFT can make decisions. and we can’t be infected by interlopers who are liable to think differently from Michael Mulgrew.

And speaking of Mulgrew, he’ll need to stop meeting with Community Education Councils. CEC, not to put too fine a point on it, is not UFT. Therefore they can’t interfere with our union business either. Communities are not UFT and ought to have no voice whatsoever in what we do or say. Just because they pay our salaries is no reason for us to interact with them.

Furthermore, in the spirit of this resolution, Mulgrew will have to stop playing with his BFFs at the Municipal Labor Committee. Fine with me, since that’s where he’s made his worst mistakes. But under his own resolution this must come to a screeching halt. That’s union interference.

The Municipal Labor Committee is composed of unions who are not UFT. Who knows what they could be thinking? In fact, when Mulgrew and his Very Smart People tried to shovel retirees into Medicare Advantage, a lot of unions opposed him. Obviously they’re a bad influence. They’re subversive, and we can’t tolerate that.

And what about NYSUT? Isn’t that composed of a bunch of unions that are not UFT? In fact, a whole lot of locals are not crazy about UFT, and even tried to stop us when we dumped former NYSUT President Richard Ianuzzi. As I recall, Ianuzzi had some issue with Andy Palotta buying seats at some fund-raising event for then-Governor Andrew Cuomo. You know, Cuomo had been attacking us, and imposing evaluations on us, and complaining that not enough teachers were getting fired.

But hey, if UFT bosses wanted to support the guy who wanted to fire teachers, it was their sacred right. All those Long Island locals who disagreed were committing union interference. How dare they?

Mulgrew will also need to cut ties with AFT. AFT represents locals from all over the country, and there’s no guarantee they share our agenda. In fact, when Mulgrew said he’d punch your face out if you tried to take his precious Common Core away from him, many locals, in AFT and NYSUT, did not wish to support Common Core at all.

And hey, don’t get me started on groups like Class Size Matters. I happen to know their leader, Leonie Haimson, and she’s been waiting a long time for reasonable class sizes (as have I). While Unity pushes a gradual, moderate class size program, with exceptions for schools like mine that are perpetually overcrowded, Leonie wants all kids to have reasonable class sizes right now. That’s absolutely unacceptable. Class sizes should be remedied when and if Michael Mulgrew says so, and not one moment sooner!

And sure, there are those skeptics, who say that C4E provided money for class size reduction, and it never happened. These heretics have the temerity to suggest that our new program, which also provides money for class size reduction, is likely to fail just as C4E did. However, we need to shun the disbelievers. Allowing them to communicate with us would just constitute more union interference.

Then there’s NPE, founded by Diane Ravitch. NPE is an organization that supports public education. Unlike Mulgrew, they didn’t support Common Core. Also, they oppose charter schools. UFT has brought charter schools to NYC, including Green Dot. Green Dot didn’t believe in frivolities like tenure or seniority. Their leader made outrageous statements about committing unnatural acts with pigs—statements that could get you or me fired (especially if you were working for him with no tenure).

NPE, though, doesn’t support them or any charter. They probably didn’t approve when UFT created our own charter schools. Clearly they are a pernicious influence, and must be banished to non-Unity land (perhaps along with the overwhelming majority of us lowly educators who don’t make the Unity cut).

Then there’s Lobby Day, when Unity places a bunch of us on buses and has us walk into offices and support whatever they instruct us to. This places us in contact with legislators who are not UFT. That’s a dangerous precedent. This obviously could result in union interference, and as such, is absolutely unacceptable.

In fact, Mulgrew himself mentioned being in Albany, and being involved in budget talks. Who was he talking with? I suspect he was talking with a whole lot of people who were not UFT members. That’s troubling. These people could infect him with their untested ideas, and then where would we be?

What would happen, for example, if some politician suggested that providing lip service to opposing health care cuts was not enough? What if, for example, one of them said Unity needed to actually support an NYC Retirees lawsuit with COPE money? That would be a dangerous precedent.

Once we start using COPE money to protect member health, we might start using it to protect member rights, and we’d get all uppity. Members would start speaking to anyone they felt like. Where would we be then?

Some teachers are married to cops and firefighters. This is dangerous, as cops and firefighters are not UFT. You don’t have to get divorced, but you’ll have to stop speaking to one another. You know—union interference. From now on, the only people with whom you may speak are dues-paying members of the Unity Caucus.

When you really get down to it, 99% plus of UFT itself are not Unity. Perhaps Mulgrew should stop addressing us altogether. If we are deemed unworthy to be part of the elite group that does all the decision making, he ought not to mess with us at all. He’s shown us again and again that our interference with union matters is meddlesome and unwelcome.

Maybe only Unity should vote, and the rest of us should simply go along with it. After all, that’s what eleven unelected, self-appointed leaders of Retiree Advocate did when they made a decision for the 300 of us who ran with them. So there’s precedent. And decisions like that, that, of course, would solve the issue of union interference once and for all.

In a dictatorship, interference is never tolerated. Is that the direction in which Unity wishes to move? We’ll find out next month.