There Must Be NO CONCESSIONS In The Next UFT Contract

NYC Educator and I had a discussion about pattern bargaining for the UFT contract.

When the last UFT contract expired, the pattern for municipal contracts at the time was 8% over two years without concessions.

Mayor Bloomberg decided that the city would not negotiate that contract with the UFT because of the recession, claiming the city no longer had the money, and the comptroller at the time, Bill Thompson, agreed.

And so, here we are, without the 8% raise that we were due as part of the pattern, which, as NYC Educator notes in his latest post, is a sacrosanct pattern, at least when the salary increases are negligible or in the favor of the city.

I am of the opinion that the UFT will completely forget about the old pattern when a new mayor is elected.

I'm a bit cynical around these guys and my feeling is, they'll look to screw us and hope that most of us don't remember the old pattern (or weren't even in the system when the old pattern was the pattern.)

I suspect that after all the givebacks and concessions we teachers have made as part of the new teacher evaluation system - the lost tenure protections (two "ineffectives" and you are fired is lost tenure protections), the extra paperwork, the extra meetings, the mandated lesson plan formatting for Danielson (yes, I know they say it is not mandated, but if you don't do it the way Ms. Charlotte wants it done, you will be "i-rated") - they will STILL negotiate a pattern-breaking new contract with the next mayor that includes concessions on time, days and/or health care.

NYC Educator said he hoped I was wrong.

I said I hoped I was wrong too, but like him, I remember the "scrapes the skies" contract of 2005 when they gave on seniority rights, bathroom duty, extra time, extra days and a host of other things and told us the contract was the best thing since the Empire State Building.

I have been telling everybody at my school that there must be NO CONCESSIONS in this next contract - not on work protections, not on time or days, not on health care costs.

We have ALREADY given our concessions in the form of the Danielson rubric jive, all the extra work and extra meetings and extra time we have to put in as part of the APPR teacher evaluation system.

If the UFT leadership comes back to us with a "scrapes the skies" contract proposal that offers any concessions at all, I will make sure everybody at my school and everybody who reads this blog on the Internet knows what happened with the old pattern, how much work we have taken on already with the new APPR system, and why we should not make any concessions at all to get the raises we were due as part of the old contract bargaining pattern.

I will call it the "scrap the dogcrap off your shoe" contract.

That has a ring to it, doesn't it?

And it will be a perfect characterization of any contract they negotiate that has concessions in it after all the concessions we have given the city and the state for free.