Retiree Advocate Is Ready to Represent

Unity's time has come.

Tomorrow is the vote count for Retired Teachers and Paraprofessionals. Alas, the paraprofessional opposition made the egregious error of heading their ticket with a UFT Unity member. Said member saw fit to stab them in the back. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but that’s the Unity way.

There’s no better example than the egregious Unity sellout of retirees. All our careers we were promised free real Medicare, along with a supplement. This has been established in court. Unity’s Mulgrew sold us out. He first did this in 2014. I was surprised. As recently as last year, Mulgrew was saying the pattern is the pattern, and we couldn’t do better.

Yet, when we had not gotten the pattern, instead of insisting upon it, Mulgrew said back pay was “not a God-given right.” What he meant by that was, after waiting years to get the raises NYPD and FDNY had, we’d have to wait even more years to get it, in dribs and drabs, at a rate of zero-percent interest. Oh, and also, the whole city would have a crap pattern going forward, including a year and a half of zero percent. Oh, and also, we would give the city a billion dollars from our 1.8 billion Health Stabilization Fund.

You see, Michael Mulgrew decided it was not enough that we didn’t get the raise when others did. It was not enough that we had to wait more years. It was not enough to accept the crap pattern. In addition to accepting it, we had to pay for it ourselves from our own health fund.

Four years later, for a three-year contract that hovered around cost of living, unique negotiator Mulgrew agreed to a 600 million dollar annual health savings, for the city, at our expense, forever. Michael Mulgrew decided city retirees would pay for the raises they were never going to receive. They would all either be dumped in an inferior Advantage plan, or pony up 5K per couple, per year, to retain the benefits they were promised free of charge.

When retirees spoke out against it at RTC meetings, Tom Murphy shut them down, ridiculed them (in a low voice), and ran as a “champion of civility.” Murphy never raised his voice when he didn’t call on you. He never shouted when refusing to allow opposition to speak. In fact, Murphy is so civil that he never holds a motions period. Thus, no one gets to vote on anything whatsoever, and there are no problems, ever.

Here on earth, Murphy’s civility looks nothing like democracy. And the Unity Patronage Cult does everything it possibly can to make sure democracy never breaks out in the United Federation of Teachers. I remember one year, looking at a ballot that asked me to vote for Elementary and Middle School VPs. I think I wrote NA and crossed them out.

How was I to know that Unity had changed the rules so uppity high school teachers could never again choose our own leader? I was naive back then, and that was by design. Unity likes an electorate with little notion of what the hell is going on.

The apathy in our union is palpable. Or at least it was until Mulgrew started messing with retirees.

When I started speaking out against the Medicare sellout, UFT Unity did not much care for it. That’s why they used union dues to hire lawyers to threaten me. Evidently His Holiness Michael Mulgrew is so important that no one is allowed to parody him. Screw the First Amendment, say Mulgrew’s sycophants.

Shortly thereafter, my old blog domain, nyceducator.com, was blocked on the Blogger domain. I asked a UFT official whether those nice lawyers sent a cease and desist to Google, which owns the platform and was told, “I don’t think they would do that.” I was not at all reassured. The answer was not simply, “No.”

Of course the Unity Cult will tell you that they’re only doing the work of the Delegate Assembly. The fact is, though, that Mulgrew controls the DA as tightly as he possibly can to make sure little to no democracy takes place. And when Mulgrew disagrees with the DA, which twice affirmed the NY Health Act, he just does Whatever He Feels Like.

Personally, I think Mulgrew blocks the act because he wants to keep the patronage gigs in the UFT Welfare Fund. Patronage is the source of Mulgrew’s power, and guarantees him an army of sycophants ready to get out there and support Whatever.

Of course, pitting one union faction against another is no issue for Unity. Ethics-shmethics. Union-Shoon-yun.

Though it did not personally affect me, the most despicable act the Unity Caucus has committed lately was its singling out of a working paraprofessional. When members elect opposition members to represent them, Unity does all it can to make it impossible for them to do their jobs. As I wrote in the linked column:

I’ve been to the Unity page. People with Unity jobs are saying Migda should have stepped down if she couldn’t attend the meetings. In fact, when Melissa Williams did just that, stepped down, they ridiculed her for doing so. She was useless, a phony, or whatever juvenile nonsense the stilted minds at the patronage mill could muster.

If you’re opposition, Unity will come after you no matter what you do. They’ll do anything to protect their privileged positions. They get paid to support Mulgrew, not members, and that has to change.

It’s a win-win for Unity. If you step down, they attack you. If you don’t step down, they attack you. If you’re in their caucus, they give you a paid position so you can do your job. If you aren’t, no job, no email, no nothing. If you can’t go to meetings because you need to work to support yourself, they ridicule you.

How hilarious the dual-pensioned, double-salaried Unity big shots find it that a working paraprofessional needs to support her family. Let’s make a cartoon of her in a funny hat and put it up on our Facebook page.

They are despicable, shameless.

When we win, tomorrow, we will not accept that treatment. If they won’t give us access to members, we will create our own. If they stand in our way, we will call them out publicly.

As they’re repeatedly learning in NY State courts, you don’t mess with the retirees.

Furthermore, as retired teachers, we’re ready and willing to school rank and file.

They’ve never seen anything like us before.