Unity--We Are the One Percent

So know your place. uppity teachers, paras, counselors and so forth.

In any kingdom, you have ranks—princes, dukes, counts, and so forth. In Michael Mulgrew’s Unity Castle, located at 52 Broadway, there are also rungs to climb.

Rung One

First, Someone Very Important has to decide you have what it takes to do whatever King Mulgrew tells you to do, immediately and without question. Then, if you have what it takes, you are hand-picked to be part of the elite, privileged, Unity Kingdom of Limitless Patronage.

Rung Two

If selected, first you sign the oath. The next step is to become an AFT/ NYSUT delegate. If you agree to go to meetings and vote as you are told, you can see this or that place. Maybe Hawaii. Who knows?

Rung Three

Your next step is to become a PM staffer and Get Paid to Do Things after your school day. Maybe someone from the Unity Royal Family will have you tag along to a gala luncheon, or some Exclusive Event. (If you’re extremely lucky, you may get to touch the hem of King Mulgrew’s garment.)

The Final Rung

If you play your cards right, support Unity no matter what they do, push everyone else to do the same, if you attend the right gala luncheons, and manage to please King Mulgrew to one extent or another, you have a shot at the Holy Grail—a full time UFT gig.

You collect your entire DOE salary, and are never subjected to demeaning Danielson observations. You rarely (if ever) set foot into undignified, inconvenient classrooms. You get paid more than any of those second-rate non-Unity colleagues who fritter their lives away helping children. Also, you get a second pension, paid for by those commoners still stuck at the Bottom.

If you continue to support Unity unquestioningly no matter what they do to members, you’ve got it made.

Consider this:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ~Upton Sinclair

Why do so many keep pushing Unity, and tell you to vote for this organization that wouldn’t lower itself include you in a million years? Because they don’t want to do the work that you do. Where the hell is the glamor in that?

Unity is the very tippity-top, and King Mulgrew is their veritable deity. They won’t have you in the organization, but demand you vote for them anyway.

We know best. Trust us. No one can do this job except for us. Only we can fix this situation. We get more money than you. We get better pensions than you. We, therefore, are better than you, and don’t you dare question us.

Down here, where we have to look up to see Mt. Olympus (or the 14th floor of Mulgrew’s Castle at 52 Broadway), we demand better, not worse, health care. Unity will focus on everything but that. They figure second-class care ought to be good enough for us peasants, down here.

After all, if we had any sense, why would we be frittering away our mundane pedestrian lives helping the children of NYC? And if Unity, like us, has to pay more for the best medical care, well, that’s why they make more than we do. They deserve it, by gosh, and by divine right. King Mulgrew says so.

In lieu of solutions, diversions:

Mulgrew makes a resolution at AFT, and Unity fully expects we’ll all thank him. Ignorant commoners won’t notice that it has no effect whatsoever on their battle to retain the traditional Medicare they were promised for generations. When Mulgrew says he opposes MA, peasants should be satisfied with that, even though it has no effect whatsoever.

You can get concierge care at this or that hospital (if only they don’t drop us), and that should be good enough for you. Meanwhile, Medicare-eligible retirees face an inferior MA program, and everyone else faces a 10% cheaper health plan. It will be great, they tell us, even though it’s been demonstrated to be inferior in multiple court cases. Who cares if PSC, the city college union, has determined the in-service plan will be inferior too?

King Mulgrew has spoken, and has declared commoners have feeble memories.

Unity talking points:

Just in case some lowlife musters the audacity to remember, or speak up, Unity Royalty goes to their reliable bag of logical fallacy. Anyone who opposes us is stupid. They’re bullies. That’s what you call argumentum ad hominem. They’re scary. They’re radical, dangerous. That’s what you call an appeal to fear. Sure, we’re selling you out, but only we have the experience. That’s what you call an appeal to authority. Oh, they hang out with this or that person, and this or that person is no good. That’s guilt by association.

Of course if you really get on King Mulgrew’s nerves (which I clearly did), he’ll use your dues money to pay lawyers to threaten you.

Neither King Mulgrew nor his Unity dukes, counts or princesses need to address the actual health sellout. It’s beneath them, and you have no right to even question them. I’ve been to a year of meetings in which now-deposed RTC Boss Tom Murphy wound himself into pretzel shapes to make sure we discussed everything but the diminishment of our health care. There were no motions and no voting, because King Mulgrew hath spoken.

Self interest rules the kingdom:

Here’s the thing—Virtually every single voice misleading us, impeding us, ridiculing us for demanding leadership do its job and represent us, often via anonymous accounts, is on payroll. LeRoy Barr calls them to meetings and lets them know that, if they want to keep riding that sweet UFT gravy train, they’d better deliver.

Otherwise, it’s back to that classroom, doing real work and getting only the sub-inflationary raises to which King Mulgrew has agreed.

That’s a big step down. If you’re a teacher, there’s no office. There’s not even a cubicle. If you’re lucky, you have a department office you share with a dozen others. Maybe you’ve found some corner somewhere where you can work quietly and undisturbed. Or maybe there isn’t, and you spend your days improvising, grabbing a moment here or there to plan.

Why would anyone working in Mulgrew’s Broadway Castle want a life like that?

But we can win:

Being a lowly peasant is frustrating. Our situation really calls for a strong response. Torches and pitchforks? A guillotine? Nah. Word is spreading about the Unity Kingdom. We’ve got something way less violent. Mulgrew and Unity can’t imagine using it would even occur to us..

In eight short months, we can vote them out of office. They can take their crowns, their sceptres, their utter lack of imagination, unionism or work ethic, and slither back to whatever primordial ooze spawned them.

We will elect to leadership people who will work for the betterment of all union members. In case you’re numb from being frozen out, or from decades stuck under the Unity Patronage Kingdom, that’s what real union leadership is hired to do.

Thanks to Daniel A. for the graphic