UFT One Of The Only Unions To Allow Retirees To Vote In Union Elections

Pretty good piece from Gotham Schools back in March on this. 

If you missed it here is the link.

It's clear if you are in the UFT leadership, so long as you maintain benefits levels for retirees, they will be your loyal voting bloc come election time.

Nothing wrong with protecting retirees or their benefits, of course.

I would like to enjoy those same benefits some day.

But the problem is, giving retirees so much say in the election results skewers the policies in the union.

This leadership doesn't have to worry so much about offending active members when they know they can count on 20,000 retiree votes every election.

Clearly the way these guys are running things these days, they know that.

Somebody in comments wrote the following:

My understanding that the increase in the retirees to vote was the change in the UFT constitution bylaws/articles.

The UFT executive board voted in favor of changing the constitution to modify that particular article.

So the question here is how do we inform the rank and file about the changes made to the UFT constitution during this union election that may affect the members' employment future?

It is time for the members to learn what the UFT constitution entails and how any changes made to it, voted on it, may affect the rank and file.

A good point made there.

The question is, how do we go about that?

Remember this is not to make it a battle between retirees and actives.

It's simply to get UFT rank and file to understand that most unions do not allow their retirees to vote, that the UFT does, and because of that, the UFT does not have to concern itself with the issues active members care about as much as they might were the retirees not to vote (as happens in most other unions.)