Thou Shalt Not Affiliate With Groups that Protect Your Health Care

So declareth King Mulgrew

Can this really be a thing? How can union representatives vote to forbid union members to defend themselves when leadership tosses them under the bus?

Of course I’m talking about Wednesday’s Delegate Assembly. Michael Mulgrew and his Unity ducklings have worked overtime the past four years to strip me of the health plan I’d been promised since I started teaching in 1984. Yet Marianne Pizzitola and NYC Retirees were just in Albany trying to ensure hundreds of thousands of us retain that very coverage.

Under these circumstances, who do they expect us to support? What should we do? Sit down and shut up? Crawl away and die?

Now they say Marianne is guilty of union interference. After all, she was key in helping defeat Unity in the Retired Teachers Chapter. That certainly interfered with the Unity plan to never allow motions or voting in the RTC. Lately she’s featured ABC members because we also stand for maintaining health care as it was before The Mulgrew Tax was imposed.

Unity, though, somehow musters the gall to forbid us from associating with people who help us. After all, people who help us certainly make them look bad. We literally pay them to help us, and instead of doing so, they lie to our faces. What the hell sort of leadership is that? We shouldn’t be so surprised. Teachers know bad leadership all too well. We’ve all encountered bad supervisors, haven’t we?

When I first became chapter leader of Francis Lewis High School, I was interested in establishing regular communication with members. I’m fond of writing, and I wanted members informed. I’d send links to current education articles, commentary, quotes, and used some of the info UFT sent me. It probably made up only ten percent of what I sent out.

I set out to get the personal email addresses of every UFT member in the building. It was not easy, as we had about 350 members. However, a friend of mine did me the enormous favor of providing me with the emails of one huge department. I was very grateful for that.

I sent out my first email. The following day I was standing outside that department office when a teacher approached me, very angry. “I feel as though I’ve been raped,” she said.

I was horrified. “Oh my gosh, what happened?” I asked.

“You sent me an email,” she said. “I never gave you permission to do that.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ll take you off the list right now, and you’ll never get another email from me again.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “You can keep sending me email.”

Shortly thereafter, she was promoted to assistant principal. The following semester, I received a complaint from a teacher who didn’t get the class she requested. I met with the newly-minted AP. She had a Delaney Book with classes laid out for her department, and told me it was absolutely impossible to give the teacher that class. She’d tried over and over, but a solution was out of the question.

I looked at the Delaney Book for a minute, picked up two cards, and swapped them. “What if you do that?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not in the best interest of the students to change their teachers this late in the term,” she answered. (It was, in fact, mere days into the term.)

Shortly thereafter, the teacher filed a grievance, and we had a hearing. The AP sat there and told the principal, “Well, Mr. Goldstein never suggested a solution.”

There’s something about people who will just say anything, anytime, with no regard for truth whatsoever that puts me off. What can you do with people like that?

Still, doing things that way seemed to work for her. She was perhaps 20 years my junior, and there she was, an administrator, while I was still a lowly teacher. One day she called me into her office and started screaming at me. I don’t remember what it was about, but I do recall exiting without a word just as the hollering began. I opened the door and the people in the outer office stared as she continued her harangue.

She complained to the principal, who said I had to meet with her and him. To make things difficult, I insisted on being accompanied by my District Representative, who was very busy. By the time he was able to show up, no one seemed to recall what the meeting was about anymore.

Later on we had a conference with the principal and several members I’d selected to discuss goings on in her department. For some reason, a whole lot of teachers were unhappy. Members discussed various departmental issues and how they could be improved. After the members left, I stayed on a few moments. The AP was angry.

“How did you select those members?” she demanded.

“Well, what I did was think of the very worst people I could. Then I thought of people even worse than that, and invited them all here,” I said. It was an odd moment because the principal, who never, ever had a disparaging word about anyone in his cabinet, uttered not a thing in her defense.

I was very sad that a young teacher, talented in art and music, a guy with one of the the very best vibes I’ve ever encountered, transferred out because of her. But things happen when people like that are in charge.

Her leap into administration is, in another respect, a great loss. King Mulgrew could use another minion like her. She could be out there, right now, using AI to spout whatever needed spouting into a Substack that no one but Unity members would read. She could insist we not support bills that protect retirees because it would violate the Taylor Law. She could claim she needed to collectively bargain for us when she really wanted to downgrade our health insurance. Like King Mulgrew, she’s unrestricted by reality.

What’s more, now it’s official union policy that you aren’t allowed to consort with outsiders. She could be his Sergeant at Arms, perhaps, keeping riffraff like me away from his Broadway Castle. After all, I’ve consorted with the enemy. I understand that Unity, beyond simply reviling militant retirees, also has an issue with DSA.

I recently learned that a friend of mine, a UFT member, happens to also be in DSA. This poses a dilemma. According to the UFT resolution, this man is now prohibited from talking to himself. Mulgrew did say unto us, at the DA, in response to ageist District Representative Aqeel Williams, that he would soon rule on how this resolution would be enacted.

I have questions, though. Sure, my friend can no longer talk to himself. That will be inconvenient when he’s rushing out to work and trying to remind himself to bring his water bottle, his lunch or phone or something. Rules are rules. But what about singing in the shower? King Mulgrew has yet to make specific rulings on that.

How is Mulgrew going to make sure we follow his edict? Will he bug our phones? Put GPS trackers on our cars? Send spies to our churches, synagogues, mosques and meeting houses to see who we sit with, and whether our hymns are sufficiently in tune? Will he install cameras on the streets to monitor our movements? I mean, it’s now official UFT policy, so it must be enforced.

For my part, I’m gonna do a podcast with at least one member of NYC Retirees, one member of DSA, and several members of UFT. We’re going to explore this issue and figure out exactly what King Mulgrew can do to keep us apart.

It’s the least I can do. After all, King Mulgrew always does the least he can do.

That’s why he’s gotta go. Don’t forget to vote for ABC!

Image by Daniel A.