When Will Unity Respect Us?

Wonder Woman responds below.

Unity thinks they are the UFT. Not me, not you. Only them. They have no compunction about working against us. When they sell us out, they expect us to thank them. After all, as Mulgrew says ad nauseum, they have Very Smart People.

Honestly, I’ve seen little evidence of Unity being smart, especially recently. Clearly they don’t think we’re very smart either (and I will come back to that).

As of this writing, my interview with Marianne Pizzitola has 16K views. People are interested in what she has to say. I’m interested as well. That’s why I invited her. Even my assistant principal watched it. She was particularly drawn in by the story at the end, where an Aetna patient died as a result of being denied doctor-recommended care. These things happen under Medicare Advantage (MA).

If you like hearing us together, I woke up early on Friday to be on Marianne’s radio show. Much though I complained about having to get up early on a non-work day (for me, at least), I had a great time. Give us a listen right here.

Despite Unity’s dramatic support of the RTC resolution to oppose MA, in the real world, outside the Delegate Assembly, there’s no evidence whatsoever that UFT bosses are working to help us. In fact, they’re working against us on multiple fronts. This month, as we face the city in the Bentkowski lawsuit, Eric Adams will try and dump retirees into an Aetna MA plan.

UFT, as part of the Municipal Labor Committee (MLC) is part of an amicus brief supporting the frigging city against us, the members.

What kind of union leadership does something like that? As if that’s not enough, they’re actively lobbying against Intro 1096, which would protect us. Mulgrew’s name appears on a letter with Henry Garrido’s signature, a letter full of lies stating the bill is illegal. They claim to be preserving collective bargaining, despite the fact that most city retirees aren’t even union members, none of us have voice or vote on collective bargaining, and none of us benefit from it.

In plain English, what that really means is they want the ability to sell us out. They are not bargaining for improvements for us. Instead, they are battling for inferior health care. They’ve accepted an awful precedent—that unions must pay for raises, whether or not they even keep up with cost of living—with our health care. And they have no issue tossing retirees under the bus in exchange for sub-standard rank and file raises.

Despite having sold us out over and over, Unity thinks we’re too dumb to notice. In the case of retirees, they practice overt ageism. Not only do they refuse to apologize for it, but they celebrate and applaud it. I saw a kid in class using her phone the other day, and I said, “I may be old, but I’m not blind. Please put that away.” I haven’t got that option with Unity. They think we work for them. They think they can tell us what to do.

That’s why, when Marianne Pizzitola, likely as not the most beloved figure among UFT retirees, comes to our Retired Teacher Chapter (RTC) meeting, she’s shouted down. Why is she here? She’s not UFT! This, clearly, is an agreed upon talking point, and it’s popped up in my comments section multiple times in the last few days.

Unity is a cult. Its only source of truth is cult leadership.

And yet, over the last year, members have failed to drink the Kool Aid. Marianne bad, Mulgrew good, chants the cult. After Marianne spoke at the RTC meeting, Unity people demanded she leave the room. Evidently, there was top secret stuff to be disclosed, and no non-UFT member could hear it or the world might stop turning.

Never mind that I was sitting there taking notes, ready to publish them as soon as the meeting finished. Never mind that Unity itself now posts meeting notes. Never mind that Mulgrew has brought multiple non-UFT guests to the Delegate Assembly, and none of them were ever asked to leave. Never mind that Unity deliberately planned to disrupt this meeting.

The approved talking point is Marianne is an outsider, an interloper, not to be trusted. Never mind that her organization is single-handedly responsible for preserving Medicare for every member in that hall who’s lucky enough to have it. Never mind that the Great Leader tried to sell us out, or that he is still working to do that.

And every Unity member must follow this point, among others, or give up their privileges. No more all-expenses-paid trips to swanky hotels. No more jobs in environments far more welcoming than those scary public schools. Get on the Mulgrew train or get the hell out.

Mulgrew sounds like the worst school supervisor in town.

A bad supervisor will threaten you and make unreasonable demands. All lessons must contain this thing, because it’s the only thing in the world that works, and nothing else can possibly work.

As chapter leader, I was once in a meeting with a member and a supervisor, and the supervisor was going on about how wonderful his other teachers were. I asked what the member could do to also be wonderful. He told me that each kid should have one green card, and one red card. When questions came up, the kids should pick up the green cards if they knew the answers, and the red ones if they didn’t.

Seeing me now you wouldn’t know it, but I was once a 15-year-old boy. Back then, if memory serves, what I was most interested in was 15-year-old girls. If any teacher had asked me to pick up a red card, announcing to said 15-year-old girls that I was too stupid to answer a question, I’d have looked at that teacher like some glowing green object that just fell from the sky.

Therefore, I expressed some hesitation to the supervisor. After the meeting, he asked me to stay for a moment. He wanted to show me his plan in action. He was going to win me over. He brought me to five or six different classrooms to look in from the hall. Not one teacher we observed was using this particular technique, and there were no green or red cards evident anywhere. So much for magic bullets.

I had a very bad supervisor once. She wanted to force me to teach Spanish. My Spanish is okay, but I love teaching ESL, and my English is far more precise than my Spanish. But the other teacher threw Spanish 1 kids out for behavior problems. I didn’t, and therefore I should teach all Spanish 1. Otherwise, she’d put me on a late schedule and I’d lose the second job I needed to pay my brand-new mortgage. I transferred to Francis Lewis.

I’ve had great supervisors for most of my years at Lewis. I have one now. What sets her apart is her willingness to work with people and her readiness to understand where you’re coming from. This places her in stark contrast with those who make outlandish inflexible demands. Mulgrew sounds like my old supervisor—Do as you’re told or go screw yourself.

Amy Arundell is much like my current supervisor. She goes out of her way to help people. She turns no one away. She doesn’t care who you are or where you stand in union politics, or any politics. She lives to be of service. Ask anyone. She is, without question, the most qualified and best choice to run the United Federation of Teachers.

Amy just wrote about her vision for those who are employed by the United Federation of Teachers.

A healthy, thriving union supports its staff, respects its members, and empowers everyone to do their best work and make the strongest possible impact. That is the vision I am committed to. If elected, I will work to create an environment where staff feel secure and valued, where ideas can be freely shared, and where we can all focus on the real work ahead: winning stronger contracts, improving working conditions so that our members feel content and proud of their profession, and ensuring that educators and students get the support they deserve.

Maybe our union should be a model for what we want to see in schools, as opposed to precisely what we need to oppose. It’s absurd that we literally have to battle our union leaders to preserve our health care. It’s disgraceful that those who lead our union see fit to debase and ridicule those who help us, even as they themselves fight us.

“You are not UFT,” is not even an argument. “You are wrong, and here is the evidence,” is an argument. That’s what I tell the Unity people who come here trying to vilify Marianne. I told one of them I was making a donation to NYC Retirees in her name. “You don’t have my permission,” she replied.

Here’s the thing, Unity. We don’t require your permission.

We will defend our rights. We will defend our health care. We will utilize the Municipal Labor Committee to help, rather than hurt, city employees and retirees. If you don’t like it, move on. We need A Better Contract, and a better union.

It’s easy as ABC.