The Unity Burger

How things ARE, or how they LOOK? You have to decide where your focus is.

I’m not a fan of burgers. But whenever Unity comes around, I feel like they’re trying to sell me one. They’re misrepresenting their product, and some of their surrogates won’t even tell you their names. After all, when libeling their critics, why admit they make double your salary? You might assume, however correctly, they have a vested interest in the status quo.

Union is not a burger, but I can’t be sure Unity knows the difference. They passionately ignore or, more likely, stubbornly resist moves to expand voter participation. Instead of mobilizing members, they trot out the same dozen or so staffers while the rest of us become increasingly disconnected, often as not seeing union as an outside entity.

Around the time I finished high school, I got a job unloading trucks at a beverage distributor. At lunch, I’d walk to McDonald’s. I had a friend who worked there, and she would overserve me, filling my bag with way more than I’d ordered. I was a teenager then, and could eat pretty much anything. Still, after two consecutive days of eating too much McDonald’s, I pretty much gave it up altogether. I decided that, whatever they called it, it was all the same stuff, just in different shapes and sizes.

When my daughter was very young, and we were on the road with few alternatives, I’d occasionally give in to her demands we stop there. I’d swallow McDonald’s coffee while she played with a toy and ignored the food. In its favor, McDonald’s has clean bathrooms. So does 52 Broadway.

I learned to avoid McDonald’s quickly. It took me decades to catch on to what UFT Unity was trying to sell me. Shortly after I started writing NYC Educator, wishing to defend UFT against media attacks, I took a really close look at the 2005 contract. It was pretty shocking. I began to deem our leadership way less attractive than Burger Number Two. (That said, I wouldn’t cross the street in search of Burger One either.)

As usual, though, Burger One was what Unity advertised. They claimed the 2023 contract, just like the 2005 one, “scraped the skies” as per usual. District Representatives visited schools and sang its praises, even though Social Security pegged inflation at 5.9% for 2021, and 8.7% for 2022. We didn’t get near enough of an increase to compensate for what we’d already lost, and salaries were effectively lowered as a result. Once again, we’d let DC37 negotiate a crap pattern for the whole city.

That’s their right, according to UFT Unity.

Of course, we had a flashy, attention-getting 500-member negotiating team. Unity made a big show of having them meet, swearing them to secrecy, and letting them know that they had no say over salary or health coverage. They could negotiate, except not on the facets that most concern working people in the US of A.

There was this guy on SNL who used to say, “It’s more important to look good than to feel good.” Sometimes I think that’s a core American value. However, I want my union leadership to do more than look good. Our leadership takes great pains to look good. These days, we need more than lip service to see them as they wish to be seen. Our last election suggested a wide majority of retirees and paraprofessionals didn’t want that same old burger.

We know Unity had no issue pushing retirees off a cliff, and into Medicare Advantage to fund their insane agreements with the city. Unity opposed Donald Trump, but fell into lockstep with the Project 2025 goal of prioritizing Medicare Advantage over traditional Medicare. Who cares if MA costs American taxpayers 22% more than traditional Medicare?

We know Unity resents us for voting them out, and they seem to show it by ridiculing us, resorting to ageist stereotypes. They even applaud their members publicly for stereotyping a protected group. I’m not sure that’s the best way to rehabilitate their image with retirees. Still, I’m just a lowly teacher, so what could I know?

Of course, they still want to look good, so they had the guy who propagated the ageist stereotypes stand up at Executive Board and say he’s good to his mom, or his grandma, or someone. That appears to be part of the Unity policy to never, ever admit error. They fervently expect us to forget. You won’t be reading about this in NY Teacher, so as far as they’re concerned, it never happened.

And it’s not Unity’s fault they lost two elections either. They seem to blame the American Arbitration Association. They unilaterally fired them without consulting the non-partisan election committee, and hired a nine-year-old company with a less than inspiring past. After all, why use the storied non-profit every other city union uses when you can find an outfit with Wall St. ties? That would be like sticking with real Medicare when you could just turn UFT retirees over to a parasitical entity like Aetna.

Unity couldn’t possibly have lost because they ignored the needs of the members. If paraprofessionals, for example, didn’t make enough money to live in NYC, that was just one of those things.

We know Unity had funds to fix para pay and decided, screw it, they’ll never notice. They could also have used these funds to help out OT/PT chapter, which voted down their contract. Instead of sweetening it, even a little, Unity decided to send the contract back to them, unaltered, saying take it or leave it. That’s some fantastic representation right there.

Of course, when you’re selling a contract that fails to keep up with inflation, you gotta do what you gotta do. Maybe they figured they needed to dress it up as much as possible. While splitting the money up equally among members, they contended that paras were getting a higher percentage in their bonus. I guess paras were not supposed to notice they were not getting the regular pay increase they needed to get by.

While DC37 devoted some of the money for hard to staff positions, Unity couldn’t be bothered. Who cares how hard it is for paras to make ends meet? Give them a one time check that looks good, and they’ll think it’s burger number one. What’s better than that?

Much of this nonsense stems from the ineffective nature of the Municipal Labor Committee, which we seem to use solely to degrade member health care. Mulgrew can feign shock all day long that the city is demanding premiums for the new, worse system they want for rank and file, but the fact is he and his Very Smart People in Unity specifically agreed to them.

I understand you have to make decisions if you’re a leader. I also understand you always want to look good somehow. If you don’t, under normal circumstances, you won’t be a leader very much longer. Somehow, though, Unity has managed to snow us for decades. Much of that can be attributed to the indifference of voters, who can’t be bothered to check a box and walk to a mailbox. Unity loves that system, and wants to preserve it in perpetuity.

With 75% of voters unwilling to participate, Unity assumed they were immune. No matter what kind of crap contract they put forth, it passed. Even the 2005 contract, a grab bag of goodies for the city, got passed. We thought we were getting a raise, and seemed not to comprehend that, when you work more time for more money, it does not represent an increase in compensation. We didn’t notice all the rights we had cavalierly tossed away, and when Randi Weingarten reduced our TDA from 8.25% to 7, neither torches nor pitchforks appeared.

That said, when Unity lost their most reliable source of votes, the retirees, they took immediate action. UFT President Michael Mulgrew got up and said out loud, for all to hear, that he no longer supported Medicare Advantage. He further declared he no longer supports Whatever Is Coming for non-Medicare retirees and in-service members. As nothing is ever the fault of Unity, Mulgrew blamed the city.

Retirees, though, are still facing the possibility of Aetna MA. Eric Adams has decided to continue to appeal our court victories. And Unity has decided they want to look good. They’re making the absurd assertion that only they oppose MA. It doesn’t matter that many unions voted against it. It doesn’t matter that, if Unity had not voted for it, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. What’s important is they wrote a letter, a letter that came back and accomplished nothing whatsoever.

The Unity Burger is very much a McDonald’s burger. Burger King, their competitor, is always saying, “Have it your way.” You want more pickles? Fine. Hold the ketchup? Okay with us. With Unity, you get it their way. If 40% of voters choose your slate, you get nothing. Not even an extra pickle.

With Unity, if high school voters choose a non-Unity candidate, too bad. After one non-Unity HS VP got elected, they changed the rules. Everyone votes on every VP, so that those uppity high school teachers can’t have their choice. They get whoever Unity chose, and if they don’t like it, too bad. Everyone else votes Unity.

Until last year, of course.

Unity Democracy is Michael Mulgrew talking as long as he wishes, along with a ten minute question period, where he alone decides who gets to participate. If Mulgrew likes your question, you can follow up. If he doesn’t like your question, he talks over you, denies you a chance to utter another word, and claims the majority wants to hear his preposterously long report. Just ignore the fact that unilaterally decided the matter on the spot.

People say red meat is not good for you. What’s really bad for you is blue and green meat with white fuzzy stuff growing on it. As far as I can tell, that’s what they build the Unity Burger with.

We need to upgrade our diet, and we need A BETTER CONTRACT, both with the city, and our leadership.