The Old Chestnut

Unity says now is a bad time to change leadership.

Back when Bloomberg was mayor, Unity thought new leadership was too risky. (One non-Unity caucus agreed and aligned with them on that basis.) Now that Trump is President-elect, they say new leadership is too risky. When Cuomo was Governor, it was too risky. In fact, no matter who runs the United States, New York State, or New York City, Unity always thinks new leadership is too risky.

After all, they have all that experience, and they’re doing the best they can do. We formed ABC because we believe they’re correct. It is the best they can do, and we can do better. Let’s take a look at the various appeals to fear from which Unity may select:

What is there to be afraid of?

Bad decisions?

Are you worried something like Tier 6 will come along and your union won’t oppose it? If so, that’s a valid concern. It was a terrible decision to allow Tier 6 to come up and sit on our hands and do nothing. Perhaps it would’ve been better to fight this. Since Unity failed to oppose it at all, we have to fight to improve it in dribs and drabs.

What about paying charter rent? Isn’t that a drain on the budget, sucking up money that could go to public schools that are accountable to the public? Well you’re absolutely correct to worry about that, since Unity failed to oppose it back in 2014, our school system is still paying, sometimes at highly inflated rates. This cost the city 75 million in 2023, and who knows how much this year? Maybe union members wouldn’t be paying a hundred bucks to visit an urgent care if we weren’t paying this inflated rent.

Maybe if we weren’t paying so much to privatize education, the city wouldn’t be quite as eager to privatize retiree health care. Of course, as Unity says, things are complex, and it was the best they could do.

Losing your health care?

This is a common worry. You may or may not have heard there is an RFP (request for proposals) for a program to replace Emblem/ GHI, which most city workers seem to favor. Unity will argue all day long that the new program will be as good or better than what we have. An issue, though, is that Unity and their BFFs in the Municipal Labor Committee agreed that the new plan would cost Eric Frigging Adams 10% less.

How exactly do you achieve that at a lower cost? Do you think Mulgrew and Unity’s Very Smart People will pull this off? PSC, the college professors union, believes they will not. They suggest that the cheaper plan will result in tiered care for city employees. Sure, your care could be as good or better, but if that’s what you want, you’d better be prepared to pay. (This could make quality care inaccessible to city employees and pre-Medicare retirees who can’t handle the upcharge.)

In fact, Mulgrew rejected the city’s last plan, claiming it would impose premiums, which he and his BFFs deem unacceptable. (If that’s the case, they should not have agreed to them.)

As if that isn’t enough, the Very Smart People engaged in a disastrous plan to dump Medicare-eligible retirees into an inferior Medicare Advantage plan, maintained by the former slave-insurance purveyors over at Aetna. Admittedly, it’s a fine plan if you think Aetna’s bottom line is more important than your health, or the care your doctor says you need.

As Unity likes to say, times are tough, and it was the best they could do.

Worsened working conditions?

I never thought I’d see the day when city teachers were handed scripted lessons. I never thought we’d be put in the position of reading aloud as though we were elementary school students. If that’s what the DOE wants, they could simply hire elementary school students. Surely they need the reading practice more than we do.

It’s nice that Unity now opposes this. However, if the programs were sufficiently vetted by Unity before they decided to support them, we wouldn’t be having these conversations. Teachers wouldn’t have been borderline compelled to use materials that simply do not work. There are other reasons not to use scripted lessons, and every teacher knows what they are—they sit right in front of them every day.

Here’s an understatement—Illustrative Math and HMH have proven less than ideal.Call me madcap, but I believe kids should read books, real ones, comprehensible ones, about things that actually interest them. That makes them readers, as opposed to science experiments. (Yes, I’ve tried this in real life, and it works.) I loved reading as a teenager. And I have to tell you, little excerpts and test prep exercises inspire no one but textbook vendors.

It’s important to hold the attention of your audience. When your audience consists of teenagers or children, that’s a challenge. And then there’s Danielson, which rates you on student engagement. How are you supposed to engage students while reading pre-programmed stuff aloud? I haven’t been a teenager for a while now, but I even then, I knew BS when I saw it. So do my students.

That, of course brings us to Common Core, and Michael Mulgrew will punch your face out before allowing you to wrest it from his hands. He need not worry on my account. While Common Core’s name has disappeared, it lives on in the genuinely awful English Regents exam, among others.

Teaching students how to pass this exam was one of the most tedious chores I’ve ever performed as a teacher. I suppose, though, I should be grateful to have known newcomers, who could not sputter a coherent sentence in English, who passed it with 65%. Despite that, it’s painfully obvious we’re teaching kids reading is a chore they must plod through. Wouldn’t it be smarter to show them reading is something that can not only bring them great joy, but also help in school and at work?

Unity hasn’t stood up for better testing. It’s good they passed a resolution supporting teacher voice, finally. Of course, such a resolution would not have been necessary if they’d done their due diligence before endorsing this nonsense. I’ve written about it repeatedly, and I’d never have endorsed a scripted program of any stripe. However, my experience is that of a classroom teacher. I’ve never had a job that entailed sitting in an office with Very Smart People.

As Unity loves to remind us, we lack their experience, and it was the best they could do.

Bad political endorsements?

I will never forget the year we endorsed NY Governor George Pataki, and he thanked us by vetoing improvements to the Taylor Law. I will never forget Kathy Hochul supporting Eva Moskowitz by speaking at her charter rally. Or when, in 2023, she tried to lift the charter cap. Of course we endorsed her anyway.

I’m old enough to remember 2013, when UFT endorsed Some Guy Who Thought UFT Couldn’t Have the Raise NYPD Got for mayor. He was defeated by Bill de Blasio. De Blasio kept all of Bloomberg’s people on and, despite being portrayed as a veritable Bolshevik by the Post, managed to snooker Unity’s Very Smart People into their very first awful health givebacks, along with one of the worst patterns in history.

And let’s not forget, after UFT’s first 2021 pick, Scott Stringer got embroiled in a scandal, UFT went and endorsed Eric Adams. Adams is now pushing a case to deprive city retirees of real Medicare, with the explicit full blessing of MLC, including Unity.

It’s true, that after we swap out our endorsement a few times, we may land on a winner. Still, people joke that a mayoral endorsement from the United Federation of Teachers is the kiss of death. I don’t know about you, but I’m not laughing,

On the other hand, as Unity says, politics is a tough business, we lowly educators aren’t smart enough to understand the intricacies, and it was the best they could do.

Lack of respect from other unions?

Other unions remember that we initiated the health care cuts. Take a look at that vote below. A whole lot of no, but yes takes it. This is because UFT and DC37, due to sheer size of membership, dominate the voting. How would you feel being pushed around by some bully like that?

I suppose you’d feel much as I do, and I feel betrayed. In fact, though I’m part of a union that pushed everyone else around, I was pushed around right along with them. I’m not nearly as worried about other unions hating us as the fact our nominal leaders have no qualms using us as pawns.

As if that weren’t enough, we initiated the miserable 2014 pattern. We gave our brother and sister unionists 18 months of no raise at all, along with one percent here and two percent there.

I’m proud to be UFT. But I’m ashamed to have a cynical, transactional leaders who are utterly out of touch with membership. They run our union in secret and get indignant when we demand to know what the hell is going on. They make secret health giveaways and claim it was the MLC, while failing to mention that they dominate the MLC. When we complain about being sold out, Mulgrew declares, out loud, we deal in fairy tales and conspiracy theories.

And, of course, Unity has 60 years of experience. It was the best they could do.

Worse service from our union?

I’m old enough to recall calling the UFT and having someone actually pick up the phone. I’m also old enough to recall being on hold for almost a half hour before giving up and seeking information elsewhere. This, of course, was after Mulgrew and Unity made “improvements” to our phone system.

Now it’s true that an awful lot of companies put you on hold when you call. A recording will announce, “Your call is very important to us.” It doesn’t matter that said company, in fact, has no idea who you are. I tend to sit there and wonder why, if my call is so important, that no one answers it. Perhaps it’s to Unity’s favor that I don’t recall hearing that while wasting my time waiting.

I don’t know how much it costs to have real people answer phones and direct calls. I don’t know what the UFT budget is. I know they could have added a few more phone lines, though. I know I used to be able to call the Queens office directly and speak to people who knew me and my school.

I don’t know how much was saved by going to this new system, or whether it was important or necessary. While UFT salaries are public, the budget doesn’t seem to be. I know the service has taken a distinct dip.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just in a bad mood because I’m old. We know that Unity finds getting older to be a great source of hilarity. Conversely, actress Mae West was reputed to have said, “Getting old is not for the faint of heart.” When you consider, for just one thing, Unity, paid to represent us, but nonetheless jumping all over themselves to sell out our health care, it appears West was right.

Of course we are just lowly educators. Unity has the experience and this was the best they could do.

That said, it’s not the best we can do, and that’s just one more reason we need A Better Contract.