What Union Does

In stark contrast to what Unity does

I love the cartoon above. Despite what you may hear, and despite entrenched, self-important bosses, union is a powerful tool for working people. If you wonder where the 5-day week came from, why we have sick days, or why doors aren’t locked and chained when we are at work, it’s because unionists battled for those things.

As much as I criticize inept UFT bosses, I have no doubt where we’d be without a union. Imagine working in a charter school and having them send you home with a cell phone so you could answer homework questions, rather than take care of your family (or even have a family). Imagine working without collective bargaining, in a red state, and having to simply hope you somehow get a raise.

We have both a union and collective bargaining, and we’d be way worse off without them. (That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement.)

Look at the gifts that couple has. Shorter hours—the English teacher in me wants to say fewer hours, but you get the point. No more “If you don’t come in Sunday, don’t come in Monday.” Decent wages are important. Minimum wage beats sub-minimum wage, but is not a living wage.

Everyone wants better working conditions. Imagine if there were no class size regulations. I’ve taught classes of 50, and it’s no fun at all. Imagine trying to get by in the US of A without health insurance. I’ve met government employees from red states who got insurance for themselves, but not for their families. I’ve known people who are now dead specifically because they lacked insurance.

Pensions are a big deal, and are rarer and rarer in these United States. We are very lucky to have what we do. When the Constitutional Convention was proposed, I did a COPE drive to support it, and recruited a good portion of my very large school. Despite differences with union leadership, I was proud to support UFT and NYSUT to work to protect our benefits.

However, when UFT Unity decided to pay lawyers to attack my First Amendment rights, I pulled my COPE contribution. How dare union bosses threaten the fundamental rights of members? Should I entrust more of my money with them? I think not. Lately, I contribute a lot to NYC Retirees, and a lot more than I ever contributed to COPE.

UFT Unity has been fighting against our interests. It is, in fact, their job to make things better for us. Two key areas are compensation and health care. Unity makes a veritable circus of having a 500 member contract committee, but lets them know that they may not negotiate health or money. The committee may be useful in other areas, but without money or health, it borders on the absurd.

I can’t stop pointing this out—Unity sold out our health care in order to procure contracts. In 2014, we imposed a crap pattern on the rest of the city, and managed to severely dilute double 4% raises by giving them out, interest-free, in dribs and drabs, to only some of us, for eight long years. In 2018, for a three-year contract around cost of living, we gave 600 million dollars a year from our health funds, in perpetuity.

What kind of negotiator gives away something in perpetuity for something that lasts three years? And what kind of negotiator agrees to cut retiree benefits in exchange for a contract that benefits them not at all? That would be our Municipal Labor Committee, largely dominated by Unity’s Mulgrew.

Who on earth wants his Very Smart People making decisions on their behalf?

MLC has made agreements to give NYC retirees and employees inferior health care. That is working backward. Union should represent progress. Mulgrew first sold his Advantage scam claiming every doctor who accepted Medicare would take the Advantage plan. Perhaps Unity’s Very Smart People told him that. Nonetheless, it proved to be incorrect.

If he wasn’t lying to us, how can we trust in someone who is so fundamentally uninformed?

In fact, Aetna told the NY State Supreme Court it would deny procedures recommended by our doctors. The court determined this would cause us irreparable harm. Public education advocate and author Diane Ravitch wrote that she did not have typical symptoms requiring heart surgery, and would likely have been rejected by a Medicare Advantage plan. So-called Advantage could’ve cost Ravitch her life, and could cost you yours as well.

If you’re in-service, or a non-Medicare eligible retiree, MLC agreed to a plan 10% cheaper than Emblem/ GHI. NYC’s Professional Staff Congress, the union that represents city college teachers, has a piece out on what that might look like, and it ain’t pretty . Mulgrew told us it would be as good or better than GHI (and I have a bridge for sale if you believe that). Mulgrew now claims to oppose it because it will carry a premium. Yet he specifically agreed to premiums.

The guy in the picture is happy to be in a union. He has a pension, and so do we. Here’s the thing, though—I’d have never thought Unity would sell out our health care. Would they sell out our pensions? If they’d sell out our health care, what’s to says they wouldn’t? In fact, even as they push to improve Tier 6, the fact is they did nothing to fight it when it skulked into existence, at the behest of disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Yes, we need a union. We further need a union that will fight to improve our benefits. We don’t need leaders who accuse us of being delusional as we fight for our lives, battling at our own expense to retain our health care.

We don’t need leaders who lie to us, intentionally or otherwise.

We need leadership that understands this—raises that do not keep up with inflation are, in fact, pay cuts. We need a union that will fight to win better health benefits, as opposed to finding money for Eric Frigging Adams.

The only way to win a union like that is to replace the indifferent, tired leadership of UFT Unity. Retirees have let them know. Next year, we have to not only tell them again, but also get our in-service brothers and sisters to join our struggle.

It’s our union. We have the power to turn it around and make it move forward again.