UFT Unity's Rehabilitation Campaign

City and State paints a fawning, thoroughly incomplete portrait of Boss Mulgrew.

This morning I was pretty shocked to read this piece in City and State. They feature a quote:

From congestion pricing to Medicare Advantage, the politically nimble leader of the teachers union seems to always come out on top.

It’s funny to me, because this “politically nimble leader” just managed to lose two concurrent elections, in landslides. How that entails coming “out on top” mystifies me. I, of course, am not a professional journalist.

While the article later manages to acknowledge Unity’s loss to Retiree Advocate, it couldn’t be bothered to contact any actual RA members. Further, City and State readers get no sense of exactly how significant those losses are. In their entire 60-year history, Unity had never lost elections like these before.

Mulgrew gets credit for being “nimble” because he paid lip service to reversing his position on Medicare. City and State readers will have no idea Mulgrew followed this up by doing nothing whatsoever to ensure that retirees are not dumped into Medicare Advantage. They will not know that the Mulgrew is still part of an amicus brief with the city to rip retirees from real Medicare.

The article praises Mulgrew for pushing federal legislation at AFT, but fails to note it will not help those of us struggling in NYC at all.

Here’s another thing that City and State readers won’t learn. I apologize for quoting and repeating myself, but this is important, and we can’t afford to forget:

Anyone following these posts with any degree of regularity knows that Unity’s brilliant negotiators decided that we should pay for raises by mortgaging our health care. In 2014, they surrendered 1 billion of our 1.8 billion dollar health fund to purchase a remarkably crappy contract. In 2018, they sold out retiree health care to get a three year contract around cost of living. And of course I always say this, but they agreed to give the city 600 million a year, forever, in exchange for a three year contract.

The fact that Unity and Mulgrew initiate such terrible deals undermines any discussion of just how “nimble” they may be. I would argue that it’s not much of a challenge to negotiate a deal if you’re willing to give up the farm for pennies. Here’s another City and State quote:

When Mulgrew took over leadership of the UFT in 2009, he found that Mayor Michael Bloomberg was resistant to negotiate municipal contracts. It wasn’t until 2014, once Mayor Bill de Blasio was in office, that Mulgrew was able to win a deal for his members. That contract included full retroactive pay with an 18% increase over nine years.

Mulgrew “found” that NYPD and FDNY, among others, had received twin 4 percent increases for two-year contracts. At the time, having been without raises for years, they looked pretty good to me. However, City and State has, once again, failed to do its homework. We did not get “full retroactive pay.” In fact, members who resigned or were fired got no retroactive pay. (That’s probably why UFT bosses didn’t like to call it retro pay.)

We waited years to get the “retroactive pay,” pay we had earned years earlier. Though we’d supposedly earned it in 2009-2010, we didn’t get all the money, interest-free, until 2018. (City and State may not know this, but 2018 money does not have the same value as 2009 money. There’s this thing called inflation.) We also managed to dump the following pattern on other NYC unions:

Teachers will receive 1 percent raises each year for the school years ending in 2013, 2014 and 2015, 1.5 percent for 2016, 2.5 percent for 2017 and 3 percent for 2018.

Does it sound like we helped our brothers and sisters meet cost of living? Did the thousand-dollar non-pensionable bonus make up for the 18 months of zero-percent increases? When DC37 managed to negotiate its most recent contract, which did not remotely meet cost of living, Unity members lectured me on Twitter about the “unbreakable pattern.”

Back when Mulgrew was negotiating with De Blasio, it would’ve been a great deal to simply get what the cops and firefighters got. At that time, though, Mulgrew told us back pay was not a God-given right. So when the pattern is good, we have to bend over backwards, wait years to get it with no interest, and impose a crap pattern on the rest of the city. When it’s awful, we have to shut up and accept it.

That’s what UFT Unity mistakes for leadership.

It boggles my mind that the Municipal Labor Committee can negotiate cuts to our health care, give away most of our stabilization fund, and promise ridiculous savings for the city—but they can’t agree on demanding a raise that meets cost of living. Our last contract fell well short of cost of living.

City and State continues its fawning:

Mulgrew now makes $356,000 a year leading the 200,000-member union. He knows how to “go to war” with a recalcitrant mayor (see the Bloomberg years) and how to make peace to close the big contract deal (see the de Blasio years.)

Well, with a 356K salary, it’s doesn’t take a genius to figure why Mulgrew is unconcerned with contracts that meet cost of living. A UFT paraprofessional making 40K might see things differently.

Given that many UFT members never got the twin four-percent raises FDNY and NYPD got, and given the rest of us had to wait 8 years to get them, with no interest whatsoever, I’d argue we lost that war with Bloomberg—and decisively.

As for De Blasio, he was supposedly a left-leaning pro-labor mayor. You’d think he’d gladly grant workers a decent contract. Still, like just about everyone in the DOE, his negotiators were likely leftovers from Bloomberg. This left-leaning mayor managed to get the best of UFT Unity, who a. failed to simply demand parity with NYPD and FDNY, b. managed to screw members who had resigned or were terminated, and c. dumped a crap pattern on the rest of the city.

Unity managed all this with a mayor who, being ostensibly pro-labor, should have jumped to give us a fair deal. Of course, before endorsing de Blasio, UFT had cannily endorsed Some Guy who told the Daily News the city could not afford to give us the raises FDNY and NYPD got. Could that be another reason “nimble” Mulgrew got such a crap deal?

This piece gives Mulgrew credit for pivoting after having lost an election. On this astral plane, however, Mulgrew was hopelessly out of touch for years, as retirees shouted into the wilderness (and supported NYC Retirees). He allowed former RTC Chapter Leader Tom Murphy to run sham meetings for years, with no voting, and perpetual suppression of member concerns.

I’m no genius, but I knew Mulgrew would lose this election, and predicted it for months. What I do, and what Mulgrew does not, is listen to members. I don’t surround myself with paid sycophants who tell me whatever I want to hear. Retiree members with no previous political leanings I’d ever detected had been approaching me for years, telling me Mulgrew’s actions were unconscionable.

I expect to see more such shoddy reporting. If it manages to cross my desk, I will answer all of it. If you see it, please don’t hesitate to send it my way.

We know what Mulgrew and Unity really represent, and it’s on us to get the word out.

Thanks to Marianne and Daniel.