Isn't funny that the very people that call the UFT a dues collecting agency, are the very purple that reap the benefits from the UFT negotiations team when it comes to our prescriptions, dental, hearing, and vision. Our retirement pensions and TDA also play into this, but they do nothing to contribute towards this! Why be party of UFT if you're not happy? You do have a choice even if you still have to pay an Agency Fee under the law. There just won't be all the great benefits that the rest of us get! So when you want to complain about bonuses vs retroactive, think about what is it exactly that you have done to help with negotiations? And yet you judge?There's a word mother called people like that!
Yeah, help out with the negotiations by keeping mum with any thoughts of your own and hail whatever crap the UFT leadership gets for you as scraping the skies it's so good even when it's far, far from that.
That's the Unity caucus hackery I know and love.
Everybody I talked to about this yesterday and today said bonuses replacing raises is unacceptable, no matter what gloss Mulgrew and Company put on it.
We have gone five years without a raise and have seen our quality of work decrease exponentially as the teacher evaluation system and Common Core have been implemented.
That's what I heard from people yesterday and today when I broached this subject.
But now that a Unity hack has come around to tell us all that we have to take whatever they feel like giving us and STFU, my faith in the rightness of the universe has been restored.
Unity will sell us out and tell us it's our problem if we don't like it.
And they're right - until we get rid of these destructive sell-outs, it is our problem.
I can only say, I have not voted for Unity since the first union vote I ever cast. I will never vote for anyone in the Feldman-Weingarten-Mulgrew family tree. I refuse to support the people that have been selling my colleagues and I out for two decades or more. I can hope that my telling anyone who will listen a vote for anything Mulgrew is a vote for BloomKleinDoch.
ReplyDeleteSince I used the term "dues collection agency" in a previous comment, I'll respond to this.
ReplyDeleteIt's a typical straw man argument: attempting to conflate criticism of the union leadership with criticism of the union itself.
The fact is that in many ways the union is well run and managed, and as a beneficiary of that, I'm grateful. I also know that there are many intelligent, hardworking people in Unity Caucus, whom I like and respect.
However...
In all my years as a teacher, Delegate, Chapter Leader (though no longer) and union supporter in my school and in public forums, I've noticed a huge gulf between the everyday business workings of the union, and the policy/political decisions of its leadership, which in fact threaten over time those very benefits we do enjoy as union members.
Much of this is due to the extreme lack of internal democracy in the union: Chapter Leaders are not expected to report to the leadership on what is happening in the schools, but to sell current policies to the membership. The Delegate Assembly is a grotesque parody of democratic procedure, with Mulgrew filibustering for the entire time and generally refusing to call on anyone but safe Unity yes men and women.
Why, it took Mulgrew five years as President of the union to grudgingly admit that Robert Rules of Order require that people be given a opportunity to speak in opposition to leadership-sponsored resolutions, as finally happened this past week. Unlike Randi, who to her credit would engage with opponents and call on them at the DA (not that there still wasn't a lot of manipulation), Mulgrew, who seems so concerned with projecting a tough image, is apparently very worried about letting people voice their opinions in public.
How much longer are we going to have those benefits, if the most important decisions (such as support for mayoral control, RttT, Common Core, Danielson, collaboration with Gates and Broad,etc.) are made in secret, without consulting the rank and file? In the case of reauthorizing mayoral control in 2009, not only was the decision made by one person, it was made in flagrant disregard of the the union's very own Unity-dominated governance committee.
Most internal critics of the union leadership are doing so precisely because of their support for the union, and because they see the leadership's shortsighted decisions as harming the long term interests of teachers, the public schools we work in, and the students we serve.
In fact, the leadership's short-sighted decisions (I'm being intentionally polite in this description) threaten the union's very existence, along with the Welfare Fund and everything that comes with it, in the future.
Your correspondent either cannot comprehend that simple fact, or else refuses to do so in order to make a political point, sort of in the "My country, right or wrong" vein.
But It's not, "My country, right or wrong."
It's, "My country, let's right her wrongs."
I agree with the comments but voting and complaining are not enough. It will take an army of activists within the UFT to overthrow these guys - not just votes or leaving it to a few MOREistas or ICEers to carry the load. Building an organization to counter Unity is very hard work and takes a small army.
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