Paraprofessionals Need a Full Duck

Unity won't even give them a bill.

I have a friend from El Salvador who wants to be a paraprofessional. She’s a single mom, smart and fully bilingual. Her kids are lovely, and I’ve no doubt that’s largely because of her. She has a lot to contribute. I’m trying to help her get a job at Francis Lewis High School, where I work F-status a few days a week. I’d like to do my part to make para lives a little better (including that of my family friend).

That’s one reason why, on Wednesday afternoon, I left work a little early and went to the paraprofessional respect rally downtown. Don’t get me wrong—If paras can pull in an extra 10K somehow, I’m all for it. And yet, the bill to make it happen has not even been written. So we were all out there rallying for something we’ve never even seen.

UFT is now running a TV ad to promote the bill that no one has ever seen.

I asked someone in the know why that was. The response I got was this—they are being ever so careful to word this bill in a way that it will not interfere with collective bargaining. That’s fascinating. The fact is there is a bill before that same City Council, Intro 1096, that will make retiree health care what we, including paraprofessionals, had been promised all our careers. I’ll come back to that.

Meanwhile, let’s explore the concept of para power, so prevalent in the calls and responses at the rally. Para power is a real thing. In NYC, it exists as a direct result of a handful of paraprofessionals who formed a slate called Fix Para Pay. It would absolutely not exist otherwise. These paras had had it with being treated as second-tier UFT members, and I can’t blame them at all.

They ran in two elections, and won seats both times.

Last year, Fix Para Pay defeated Unity by a factor of three to one. Make no mistake—That is para power.

Unity had studiously ignored the needs of paraprofessionals since 1969, when they became part of our union. They got the same raises we did, and their salaries remained low as ever. As recently as the last round of contracts, Michael Mulgrew had 450 million dollars to fund hard to staff positions, and opted not to help paras at all. (Unity further opted not to help OT/PT members, who’d voted down two successive contracts.)

If it were not for the brave individuals who created and ran with Fix Para Pay, there’d have been no rally. There’d have been no speeches. I’d like to say there’d have been no bill, but of course there is no bill anyway. The notion that they have to be ever so careful to create one is absurd. If they have not yet figured it out, they ought not to have announced it. (But then there’s that election coming up.)

Fix Para Pay, a creative and thoughtful handful of paraprofessionals harnessed their power and used it against the Unity Caucus. That is the reason, and that is the only reason that Unity, after 56 frigging years, acknowledged their plight.

How do I know that?

I’d argue, by letting this issue fester for half a century, that Unity Caucus treated paras with the very same disrespect they now bemoan. In fact, they very recently doubled down on that treatment. Migda Rodriguez had the temerity to not only oppose Unity, but also to win two elections against them.

The first time this happened, she won the position of second vice chair. Last year, she won first vice chair. Unity treated her very poorly, publicly ridiculing her because she didn’t attend meetings.

Unity made a Where’s Waldo-style picture of paraprofessional/ single mom Migda Rodriguez in a funny hat, and deemed it hilarious that she needed to work a second job to make ends meet.

That was pretty low, even for Unity. It’s one thing to go after highly compensated big shots like Mulgrew. It’s quite another to go after a single mom just trying to get by. Unity demanded she step down. It was irresponsible, they claimed, to hold that position and not go to meetings. Who cares if her priority was supporting her family? To do the right thing, said Unity’s Very Smart People, Migda needed to step down.

This was even more remarkable because they’d just gotten over ridiculing former OT/PT chapter leader Melissa Williams because for doing just that. Migda was irresponsible because she hadn’t stepped down. Melissa was irresponsible because she had stepped down. There is no winning with Unity. If you oppose them, they hate you. You’re subject to vicious personal attacks. Due process? Not for them.

That’s just the way they roll. All they care about is staying in power. Publicly attack one of the lowest-paid UFT employees? No problem at all. I wrote about this repeatedly, and would still be writing about it if Unity hadn’t finally broken down and given her a job. Migda is who the paras selected, and blocking her as long as they did displayed the blatant lack of respect Unity has for democracy.

Unity’s standards are fungible, based on opportunity (rather than ethics).

That’s one reason there’s no actual bill. Honestly, if there is a way to write this that agrees with their notions of collective bargaining, whatever they may be, why on earth has it not been done already? And again, if this were such a pressing issue for Unity, why didn’t they enshrine a real pensionable permanent raise into the paraprofessional contract when they had the chance?

As for retirees, Unity claims to oppose Intro 1096, which would protect retiree health care, because it interferes with collective bargaining and the Taylor Law. That’s utter nonsense. Neither collective bargaining nor the Taylor Law applies to retirees. Of course, that didn’t stop Unity from trying to dump all retirees into a Medicare Advantage plan to support a compensation increase none of us would receive.

Is degrading our health care, to Unity, collective bargaining? If so, who needs it?

In fact, if there is some magical fairy dust that Unity has, and said fairy dust will give paras a ten-thousand dollar bonus, why can’t they simply get their genius lawyers to rewrite 1096 so that it also does not interfere with the collective bargaining process? That’s easy—it’s because Mulgrew’s lip service to opposing Medicare Advantage is just that. While he says he doesn’t approve of it, he does nothing to stop it.

I’m very sorry to have to remind you again that retirees are facing the nuclear option—the Bentkowski case which would dump us all into an Aetna Medicare Advantage plan. Unity is part of an amicus brief against us, and lobbies against state and local legislation that would protect us.

Furthermore, given we have not seen the bill, and given it’s composed of magical fairy dust, who’s to say there won’t be some poison pill inserted within it? There’s precedent for that. We all remember the 2018 contract that had Appendix B slipped into it. No one suggested, as we voted for it, that we were voting to screw our retired brothers and sisters.

Here is how Mulgrew presented that to us, according to my DA notes:

Health care negotiated with all unions. Done six months ago. MLC thought something bad could happen with health care because of DC. We wanted to lock in a deal. No additional copays, but made a change for all unions. We tried to get plan in better place. Was proactive approach. Has been out for six months. Was smart thing to lock down our health care with no significant cost ships to union membership. Others pay 3200 out of pocket. We are only workers who can get plans with no premiums attached. If UFT members get cancer they can go to Memorial Sloan Kettering—this is with HIP, also Hospital of Special Surgery. Go read it before you tie it to this contract.

It sounded good to me at the time. No additional co-pays? That proved untrue, as everyone who’s paid a hundred bucks to go to an urgent care can attest. No significant cost ships (shifts?) to union members? For the first time ever, retirees are paying co-pays for Medicare, as they would for the MA plan Mulgrew was peddling. And there is no mention whatsoever of the fact he proposed retirees pay 2500 each, or 5K per couple, per year to start to retain real Medicare and a Medigap plan. That would be unaffordable to many or most retirees.

Mulgrew’s portrayal of Appendix B was an outright misrepresentation, or “misinformation,” as our esteemed trustees like to say. I certainly hope he’s not doing the same now. Of course, whatever’s going to happen, I hope it works out for the paras.

If paras deserve respect, don’t they deserve tenure as well?

If Unity really wanted to do something for paras, they’d lobby to make them pedagogues, or give them a route to do so, perhaps via education. Secretaries are pedagogues, though they don’t work with kids. I don’t begrudge the secretaries, but paras need opportunities as well. Like us, paras need a route to tenure.

Fix Para Pay supports ABC. So do I.

We support better pay for paras, maintaining real Medicare for retirees, and will utilize something other than magic fairy dust to achieve it. Keep that in mind, and vote for our slate in May!