Unity Caught in the Act

Misogyny, abuse, ageism, wage theft, and decadent, toxic culture in full bloom

They get you coming and going. You work every year, and make 20K less than your friend who works in Nassau, five miles from your workplace. Still, unlike him, you’re promised free Medicare with a Medigap plan. When you’re about ready to take the city up on this promise, your ostensible leader makes bone headed deals that trade it away for contracts that are unremarkable at best—contracts from which you will not benefit at all. He and Unity assume that you, being old, are too dim to notice.

You fight, and they side with your enemy. You introduce legislation, and they lobby with your dues to suppress it. They introduce co-pays for retirees already paying premiums for pharmacy coverage, and expect to be thanked.

These are the same people who applaud ageist memes at the Executive Board. These are people who, when someone comes along to actually help us, resort to gratuitous personal attacks and outlandish resolutions about union interference. They threaten you with civil and criminal penalties for exercising your First Amendment Rights, and marvel anyone would question their judgment.

Then, when Amy Arundell is personally attacked in the most vile and misogynistic possible fashion, they feign shock at the obvious conclusion they did this as well. There are plenty others, they suggest, besides Unity Caucus, who behave this way. It’s mere coincidence they happened to show up at the UFT Delegate Assembly. Any moment now, King Mulgrew will identify them and the interlopers shall feel his wrath!

So he says, in an email. And yet, Unity employees have engaged for months in egregious, unjustified personal attacks, with full knowledge of Mulgrew and minions. It’s what they do, and who they are. Yesterday we noticed them scrubbing some of the most egregious examples, but we remember.

Look what a Unity-approved City Council candidate had to say, right after Amy announced:

This is the level of discourse Unity endorses, literally.

When we filed election complaints, Unity ruled for Unity (surprise!), against us, and in favor of similar juvenile invective. Unity decreed they did right and we did wrong—you know, by associating with people who, unlike them, actually protect us. Perish forbid. When outsiders accused us of antisemitism, I filed a complaint. That’s just fine, ruled Unity. THAT’S not union interference.

Mulgrew and Unity enabled and encouraged this despicable attack on Amy. When people personally attack you, says Unity, that’s not union interference. When Marianne Pizzitola and her group help you, that’s union interference. And they should know, because they’re the ones making up rules as they go along. So move right along, abusers.

Unity’s morally bankrupt culture did not simply materialize out of thin air. It’s a tradition. Mulgrew leads, and the cult follows. He turns off the microphones of speakers who displease him. He filibusters at our DAs to make sure voices are not heard. He sends his ducklings to the RTC to make sure nothing gets done there either. He makes snide remarks about his opponents he fancies oblique, and ridicules free elections as “silly season.”

In fact, one Unity member, who I used to actually respect (fool me once…), has revealed herself as someone with no moral center whatsoever. Her prose, whoever or whatever writes it, is full of passive-aggressive, disingenuous bile, spouting anything about anyone at anytime, and their family members are fair game too—so long as it suits Unity’s task at hand.

Aside from the highfalutin’ posturing Unity presents in lieu of leadership, I’m bone weary of their King, Mulgrew the First, constantly in my pockets scrounging for spare change. For example, if you’re a retiree, and you pay dues, you may think that makes you part of the union. Well, you’re wrong. According to a UFT staffer who called me, retiree dues merely entitle you to be a member of the RTC.

Should you choose to, you know, work, they tax you. They deduct additional dues from your check, and when you ask their leaders to stop, which I did via email, they have a staffer give you a call. (The Big Dogs are busy doing Important Stuff.) They offer neither to return the dues they took without your approval, nor to stop taking them in the future.

Evidently, the agenda is this—excerpted from a NY Teacher article that RTC Chapter Leader Bennett Fischer kindly shared with me:

If you return to work for the Department of Education and continue to collect a pension, you will find that you are paying union dues both as a retiree (from your pension check) and as an employee (from your payroll check). This occurs because two separate agencies are involved. The Department of Education does not know that you are retired and it automatically deducts dues from every employee represented by the UFT.

The UFT has developed an automated dues refund system. Members are not required to request a refund.
Upon receipt of all the dues records from various city agencies, the accounting department will automatically calculate a refund for all eligible members and send them a check. Refunds will be processed for the period July 1 through June 30 and will include only those dues amounts deducted that are in excess of the full active dues rates for the period.

Refunds are expected to be issued in November.

Interesting, ain’t it? The buck stops elsewhere. It’s that mean old Department of Education, who doesn’t know that you are retired. Pardon me for belaboring the obvious, but why doesn’t the UFT frigging tell them? (Don’t we pay them to do stuff like that?) Because they don’t want to, of course. They like taking your money. After all, how else will they compensate the people who take time out to commit stomach-turning attacks on those of us who question The Great and Powerful Mulgrew?

Unity musters the temerity to suggest it’s the DOE sending them money, as though they somehow have nothing to do with it, and assumes old people are too feeble to notice that they are doing jack squat to remedy the situation.

Meanwhile, they graciously inform you, you must pay dues until you are in excess of the full active dues rates. That’s a pretty steep burden. I’m not sure whether or not anyone’s met it, but it still looks like double-dipping to me. No one ever told me I was part of the union only on my days off. I wrote a second letter to Michael Mulgrew, LeRoy Barr, and Michael Sill:

Gentlemen:

Thank you for having a staffer inform me that you have no plan to refund the dues you have collected without my permission for two years, above and beyond those I pay as a matter of course. As you well know, my job as an F-status teacher is at-will, with no retention rights, and I can be fired at any time, at any moment.. In fact, I was told on very short notice not to bother coming in this week and next, as they are giving exams. That would never have happened to me as a tenured teacher.

Since I am paying double dues, I wonder whether you are prepared to offer me double co-pay reimbursement, extra glasses, or perhaps simply reimburse my spouse for pharmacy care at the same rate I am reimbursed. I fail to see why I should be penalized for doing work that offers me virtually none of the rights I had as a tenured teacher.

Regardless, I’d like to know when this policy was established. I’d like to know whether it went through the Delegate Assembly and the Executive Board, or whether it was simply decided unilaterally at 52 Broadway. My thousands of readers would like to know as well.

Very truly yours,

Arthur Goldstein

With all due respect, I shall sit while waiting for a response. Last I looked, there was no requirement for retirees to pay dues at all. I love the notion of union, and I’m glad to participate. Nonetheless, I don’t approve of being charged twice for it.

It’s particularly egregious because, as my letter states, I have far from the same status I did when I was in service. It is nothing less than outrageous that Unity demands in-service rates from unprotected, per-diem employees—employees with no prospect of ever attaining due process rights.

Thankfully, I’m not so bad off. They can pickpocket a few bucks from me here and there, and it won’t fundamentally affect my lifestyle. That said, every day I go in, I meet substitute teachers who retired years before I did. They come in each and every day they can because they cannot afford not to. I can’t say how many are in this situation, but I’m certain the extra bite out of their paychecks is painful.

How many times should you have to pay dues each month? Once ought to suffice. But not for Michael Mulgrew and Unity. After all, urinal decals don’t grow on trees. They need cash to pay not only their inflated salaries, but also for lawyers with which they threaten and even sue members. I happen to know one member being sued with our dues money right now. While he may not wish me to share details, I know them, and they’re absolutely ridiculous.

There is no bottom with these folks.

Note—I will be in Tennessee for the next week, and posting may be scarce to nil.

Coming soon: The Rigging of the Votes