UFT Unity Confronts Democracy

And it terrifies them.

It’s been a remarkable week for UFT Unity. In addition to the ongoing shitshow of their massive health care sellout (coming soon to rank and file near you), they’ve added what I’m going to call Amygate. In fairness, Amy Arundell is not an elected official. However, by following the virtually unprecedented technique of actually doing her job, she’s earned a lot of loyalty and faith from those of us who do the nuts and bolts of union work.

But democracy has been an ongoing affliction for UFT Unity. They want complete power, total control, and anything less than that must be eradicated. The most egregious example of this is the UFT Vice Presidential election. When I first started teaching (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) New Action’s Michael Shulman won VP high schools. Unity blocked him for months, forced a new election, and lost by a higher margin.

Once they regained total control, they needed to keep it by any means whatsoever. So they changed the rules. They arranged for all branches to vote on all VP positions. This is blatant vote-rigging, and has denied high school teachers their choice of VP on multiple occasions. Most recently, my friend Jonathan garnered the majority of high school teachers.

Let me tell you something. Stacy Abrams can talk about how voting is rigged in Georgia and other red states, but they’ve got nothing on UFT Unity. And it doesn’t end with the VP races. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Melissa Williams was elected leader of the OT/ PT chapter. She’s stepped down in frustration. First, she was unable to select staff. She was saddled with Unity staff already in place. Not only that, but her emails were censored. She had to run staff communication through Rick Mantel, the Unity charmer who shamelessly stepped into Amy Arundell’s job.

Then, when the OT/PT had the temerity to vote against a contract that did nothing to move toward the parity they sought with teachers, Unity, providing no evidence, said they got hundreds of emails demanding a revote. Imagine if Stacy Abrams had actually demanded a revote when she lost the Georgia governor race, rigged though it was. But Unity does what it likes. Voters knew UFT/Unity wasn’t even going to try helping, and Melissa stepped down in frustration.

More recently, the UFT paras elected several non-Unity candidates. Among them was Migda Rodriguez, elected 2nd Vice Chair. I remember Hector Ruiz used to be 2nd Vice Chair, and I saw him regularly. He was doing things. Acccording to Migda, she’s got no office and was told her duties entail only attending meetings.

Their goal, of course, is to have Migda step down as well. It’s tough being in a position of authority. You know this as teachers. You are challenged and tested. I got used to it from kids. It was tougher from adults, I learned, when I became chapter leader. In a weak moment, I considered stepping down. But a Sergeant in our JROTC pulled me aside and said things like this are par for the course. If you step down, the bastards win (!).

If I won an opposition office in UFT and they tried to marginalize me, I’d build my own email network by hook or by crook. I’d tell Rich Mantel in no uncertain terms what he could do with his Big Brother tactics. Furthermore, I’d tell the entire world how UFT Unity tries to subvert democracy. You have to be creative to deal with a deck stacked against you. (I didn’t start writing in the Daily News by coincidence.)

And I’m sorry, but I must once again address the elephant in the room, which is health care. Mulgrew and his stooges are hard at work trying to dump rank and file members into a health care plan that costs 10% less than GHI-Emblem. No member has voted on this, and no member has had a voice in this. The much vaunted 500-member contract committee had no say on this or salary.

There’s been an ongoing shitstorm as Mulgrew and his fellow Municipal Labor Committee thugs, the very same ones who handed over a billion dollars of our stabilization fund to the city, have maneuvered to dump retirees into an inferior Medicare Advantage plan. NYC Retirees have gone to court, and have defeated MLC multiple times. There’s one more round in the NY Court of Appeals, and I certainly hope to see Mulgrew lose again. After all, retirees have no voice on contractual matters, so I don’t even know how he presumes to speak for us.

Add to that the shitstorm of removing Arundell, a much loved borough leader. I sense Michael Mulgrew doesn’t like Amy Arundell. I know her to be opinionated and outspoken, and I was very glad of that when she was advocating for my members.

I’ve observed Michael Mulgrew for years. At the Executive Board, he comes in whenever he feels like it, talks for a while, and is never there during the question period. At the DA, he severely limits time for member concerns, insults people who disagree with him, and turns off microphones when he really doesn’t wish to hear more.

Thin-skinned, intolerant, and brimming with hubris is no way to run a union. In fact, it’s no way to run a classroom. With an attitude like that, you wouldn’t last five minutes in front of a group of teenagers.

I live near the water, and when two storms converged, it brought us Hurricane Sandy. I’m glad I have insurance. Michael Mulgrew is about to pull GHI away from members, and that will put him directly into the path of shitstorm number three. His insurance is a fundamental lack of democracy.

UFT voting is still done by snail mail. That’s no accident, and Mulgrew’s stooges will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way, even though they’ve enabled electronic SBO voting. I am older than most of my colleagues, and it’s rare that I visit a mailbox anymore. Who knows? Perhaps some of my younger colleagues have never used one at all.

During a UFT election, the opposition gets a page, or half a page, or something, in the UFT newspaper almost no one reads. Random parakeets see them on the bottom of their cages, but few of them bother to vote.

If UFT Unity actually wanted people to vote, they’d make voting more accessible. They’d allow it online. They’d nag you to vote. Why on earth does UFT mobilize phone banks for candidates but not union elections? Why aren’t we getting multiple emails saying hey, Goldstein, we haven’t recorded your vote yet and there’s another two weeks, one week, three days, 12 hours, and so forth?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because the caucus leadership is terrified of waking us up. They want us sleepwalking through unionism, practicing activism only as they see fit, and not bothering to vote unless we are a. on payroll, or b. under the influence of someone who is.

As Mulgrew navigates his multiple shitstorms, find out whether your chapter leader is a part of the cabal, the quasi-Borg Collective, the elite, invitation only Unity Caucus. Ask whether your chapter leader has signed an oath agreeing never to disagree with Mulgrew and his stooges at 52 Broadway.

If the answer is yes, find another candidate. Or better yet, run yourself. Tell members that you will represent them, not Michael Mulgrew. Tell members that you will encourage those who help us, like Amy Arundell, rather than remove them. Tell members you will work to create health care savings for them, rather than Eric Adams.

It’s time for us to really become that big, bad “powerful teachers union” the tabloids are always crapping their pants about.