Buffalo School District Offers Worst Contract Deal Ever

From the Buffalo News:

An update on contract negotiations with the Buffalo Teachers Federation took center stage at Wednesday’s meeting of the School Board.

Major points in the school district’s most recent proposal include a 10 percent increase in teacher salaries effective upon ratification of the contract. Teachers who work at least 160 days during the 2015-16 school year would be eligible for one-time payments ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 depending on their pay-step level.

In addition, active employees would pay 10 percent of the cost of premiums for their health insurance, and if the agreement is ratified, new hires would contribute 20 percent of premium costs.

Future retirees would contribute the same as active employees, effective July 1. Physician copays would increase to $15, from $5. And the district proposes eliminating the expensive policy rider that covers cosmetic surgery.

In addition, the school day would be lengthened from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 30 minutes and the school year would run for September 1 to June 30.

Also, new teachers (7-12) would have to teach six periods a day and all new teachers would have to fulfill 4 days of extra professional development.

Teachers would be required to use tracking technologies like "Parent Portal," seniority preference for transfers would be eliminated, there would be no early retirement incentives and personal days would be reduced.

OK, so let me get this straight.

Teachers have been without a raise for eleven years.

Buffalo is offering them 10% for those eleven years, and in return teachers have to pay 10% into their health care, new teachers have to pay 20% into their health care, the work day is increased by 40 minutes and the year is increased to 188 work days.

In addition, new teachers have to do more PD, some have to teach a sixth class, sick days would be reduced and seniority preferences for transfers would be eliminated.

Uh, no thanks:

In a statement, BTF President Philip Rumore said Buffalo teachers are already $20,000 behind their counterparts in other districts, which is a loss of $600,000 in lifetime earnings and $10,000 a year less in retirement because their retirement is based upon their final salary.

“The Board’s salary offer of a 10 percent raise, effective upon ratification of a new contract, over the 11 years teachers went without a salary increase, amounts to a less than one percent increase,” Rumore wrote.

As the unions are weakened even more post-Friedrichs, you can see this kind of contract becoming the standard thing around the state - especially if the Triborough Agreement goes away (as some think it may.)

Take a shit sandwich and if you don't like it, well, too bad - there's nothing you can do.

With a lack of vision, foresight and planning, the UFT, NYSUT, the AFT and the NEA have brought us to a place where we are about to be effectively neutered and your union dues will be useless for anything except shitty car insurance offers and discounts to Great Adventure.

Given the weakness of the unions these days, given the impending Friedrichs decision and the consequences thereafter, and given that Cuomo and Elia have handed Buffalo school officials a lot of power to impose what they will, it's hard to see how there's a good outcome here for Buffalo teachers.

With the kind of contract being offered there, why would ANYONE want to start teaching in Buffalo schools?

Here's what one commenter at the Buffalo News wrote:

So, the district proposes increasing starting teacher pay to 35K a year, but expects them to pay 4K a year toward their family's healthcare. When you add up the numbers it sounds an awful lot like the same deal employees of fast-food chain restaurants throughout the state will get when the min. wage is raised to $15 an hour over the next few years. And fast food workers don't have to invest 100K of their own money in their training. The district obviously has no interest in a new contract or the quality of its future workforce...

Indeed.

Does The Buffalo School District Really Think Teachers Will Go For This?

From the Buffalo News:

After years of failed attempts to negotiate a new contract with the Buffalo Teachers Federation, the School Board is now taking its latest offer directly to teachers.

The move underscores a lack of faith that negotiations are headed toward any kind of resolution, and suggests the district could be close to pulling the plug on talks with an outside mediator. That would put the district in uncharted waters, and some have already suggested the issue will likely wind up in court.

In a letter emailed to teachers Thursday, the board attempts to make the case for contractual changes it is seeking. The most significant include:

• Increasing the school day from six hours and 50 minutes to seven hours and 30 minutes.

• Increasing the number of work days from 186 to 189 each year.

• Requiring teachers to pay 12 percent of their health insurance premium, as opposed to paying nothing now.

• Allowing principals to transfer and assign teachers based on educational needs, not seniority.

• A 10 percent salary increase for teachers, plus an additional 1 percent each of the next three years.

“Without the changes the District has proposed, a system of failure will simply be perpetuated, and the consequences of continuous failure could be devastating,” the board’s letter states.

The decision to take its offer directly to teachers is the latest turn in a lengthy and contentious negotiation process to revamp a contract that expired more than a decade ago. Attorney Terry O’Neil, who is negotiating for the district, said board members do not believe union leaders are accurately relaying their offers to teachers and wanted to present the information themselves.

“We went to the teachers and said ‘Here are the options, just so you know,’ ” he said.

These are the "options"?

Longer school day, longer school year, loss of seniority rights and paying 12% of health care?

Dunno about all the teachers teachers in Buffalo, but my response to a "Fuck You!" proposal like this would be "Fuck you too!"

The 1% "increase (10% + 1% for each additional year over the next three) is more than eaten away by the health care costs and the extra time/work.

This is what the district went around the union to offer to teachers?

Uh, thanks, but no thanks.

Seems many teachers in Buffalo feel the same:

Buffalo Teachers Federation President Philip Rumore said his office had been fielding calls all day from teachers angry about the board’s letter.

“The letter outraged the teachers,” Rumore said. “It was like rubbing salt into an open wound.”

Buffalo teachers are working under the longest expired contract in history.

The district, backed by the powers that be, are offering a "Fuck you!" contract in order to continue the logjam in negotiations, giving them the excuse to take the mess to court and try and circumvent the Triborough Agreement:

Some have already suggested the case could end up in court and test the Taylor Law, the state statute that sets rules for municipalities when bargaining with civil service and teacher unions. Many argue that the law and its accompanying Triborough Amendment – which allows for expired contract terms to remain in effect until a new deal is reached – have long given these unions a clear edge in negotiations.

“This is a perfect illustration of how the combination of the Taylor Law and the Triborough Amendment can create problems,” O’Neil said. “We’ll have to assess where we’re headed and whether we’re headed for litigation.”

So this battle in Buffalo is something to watch statewide, not only for how the contract negotiations play out but also to see if there is a weakening of the Triborough Agreement that maintains expired contracts in effect until a new contract deal is agreed upon.

I wouldn't be too surprised if that isn't the ultimate goal of the powers that be here - to weaken Triborough while maintaining the punitive Taylor Law that punishes municipal unions for striking.

NYCDOE Website Crashes As Payroll Reveals Retro Payments (UPDATED - 5:55 PM)

My friend NYCDOEnuts:

On the day NYC teachers finally learn how much $ they've waited SIX yrs for, the DOE schedules weekend maintenance. pic.twitter.com/KCZwD5eHQ0

— nycdoenuts (@nycdoenuts) October 10, 2015

Probably not an accident that the website was taken down for "maintenance" at the same time the retro money was revealed in paycheck stubs:

@nycdoenuts I think their servers were unpreprared for the traffic & crashed, & now they're scrambling to fix them.

— Sean McGowan (@jersey2bronx) October 10, 2015

Rage Against The Levene puts it all in persepctive for us:

I don't know if you heard teachers made the schools.nyc.gov website crash because the retro check amounts were posted.

Imagine if they voted.

Indeed.

Imagine.

UPDATE: John Galvin tweets the following:

@perdidostschool doe sent email yesterday that system would be down all saturday

— John Galvin (@JohnGalvinBK) October 10, 2015

Fair enough, perhaps the maintenance was scheduled by the DOE beforehand.

I still couldn't get on the payroll site the few times I tried throughout the day yesterday.

NYSED: Districts Will Need To Renegotiate Union Contracts If They Want Education Aid Increases

The Senate and Assembly kept saying education aid would not be linked to Cuomo's getting his teacher evaluation reforms.

They reneged on that:

ALBANY—School funding and teacher evaluations are linked after all, a top official with the state education department said late Monday.

In the apparently still-fluid state budget, Governor Andrew Cuomo and lawmakers are considering making an increase of at least $1.4 billion in school aid contingent on state approval of locally negotiated evaluation plans for teachers and principals by a mid-November deadline. The structure would be similar to 2013, when districts first implemented the current evaluation system.

That year, the New York City Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers missed the state-imposed mid-January deadline, prompting officials to withhold $250 million from the state's largest school district.

According to budget language that has not yet been finalized, the department would craft—subject to approval of the Board of Regents—regulations outlining a new evaluation system by June 30, deputy senior education commissioner Ken Wagner told Capital on Monday.

Some aspects of the rating system would be optional, so they would require negotiations between school districts, teachers and principals’ unions.

“Theoretically, all districts would have to review their contracts and see whether their contracts have to be modified,” Wagner said. “They would have to renegotiate their contracts, and all of the plans would have to be submitted and approved by November 15 to get their increase in state aid.

“They would still get their base state aid, but they wouldn’t get their increase,” he continued. “Statewide, we’ve seen numbers from 5 to 6 percent. Let’s just say it’s a 5 percent increase in state aid; that 5 percent would be removed from their aid allocation from the entire year.”

The more we learn about this budget deal, the worse it gets.

Imagine if Cuomo wasn't staring down Preet Bharara and living with underwater job approval ratings.

What would have gotten then?

StudentsFirstNY And The New Teacher Project Have A Teachers Contract Framework For You

From the Buffalo News:

StudentsFirstNY, a statewide education reform group, and TNTP, a national education reform group, has released a new report outlining their recommendations for changes to the Buffalo Teachers Federation contract. The report is endorsed by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, but many of the proposals are unlikely to be readily agreed to by the teachers union.

Their seven-page report recommends higher starting salaries for teachers -- an increase from $32,897 to at least $45,000 -- but it also recommends that many changes that would require givebacks from the BTF, including teacher contributions to health insurance, a devaluation of teacher seniority, merit-based pay, longer school days, a more rigorous tenure process, and fewer sick days.

The report overview states, "In many ways, the current agreement actually makes it harder for teachers to get the pay and respect they deserve, and harder for Buffalo’s schools to ensure that students are afforded effective teachers who can provide a high-quality education."

Do they even read the garbage they write?

They write: "In many ways, the current agreement actually makes it harder for teachers to get the pay and respect they deserve."

Their remedy?

"An increase from $32,897 to at least $45,000 -- but it also recommends that many changes that would require givebacks from the BTF, including teacher contributions to health insurance, a devaluation of teacher seniority, merit-based pay, longer school days, a more rigorous tenure process, and fewer sick days."

Yeah, that'll get quality people to sign on to teach in Buffalo (or anywhere else they push this garbage.)

This is the second "report" out this week from an ed reform hack group calling for higher teacher pay to be offset with other "reforms."

NCTE also touted one.

You can see the framework for teachers contract going forward here - massive givebacks in every area for a little chunk of change in the beginning.

This one goes for the moon - seniority devaluation, merit pay, longer school days, tenure "reform," fewer sick days and cuts to health benefits for a little over $12,000.

No thanks.

Good luck selling that to prospective and current teachers as a sign of "respect."

Zephyr Teachout Tells PEF Members: "Cuomo's Not Invincible Anymore"

From the Times-Union:

While the Fordham law professor lost her Democratic primary challenge earlier in the month to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Zephyr Teachout on Monday vowed to publicly support members of the Public Employees Federation as they move into upcoming contract talks.

"I will stand with you to get that dignified contract," Teachout told PEF delegates. Members of the 53,000-member white-collar state workers union are gathered this week for their convention in Niagara Falls.

She also took a shot at Cuomo, according to a PEF member who was there and who took notes. "Andrew Cuomo is not invincible anymore," Teachout said, referring to the spirited but ultimately unsuccessful primary challenge.

Teachout's talk, in which she also ripped what she termed privatization moves by the governor, sparked wide speculation among union activists that she might take some sort of hands-on role in the looming contract battle.

Among the possibilities mentioned were that Teachout was mulling a tour or series of events to highlight the importance of New York's public sector workers.

Phone calls and emails to Teachout weren't returned on Tuesday, nor were messages with what had been her primary-race campaign staff.

PEF spokeswoman Jane Briggs confirmed in an e-mail that Teachout offered "moral support'' to the union during a speech on Monday.

You can bet Cuomo will look to retaliate against PEF in contract talks for backing Teachout during the primary.

I hope she does support those PEF members who supported her during the primary.

We'll see if that happens.

People in politics- even Fordham professors who take on entrenched interests in primaries - say all kinds of things that they ultimately never follow through on.

UFT, De Blasio Back To Bargaining Table On Contract

Sally Goldenberg at Capital NY:

The de Blasio administration and the United Federation of Teachers will return to the bargaining table in the coming weeks to hammer out an unresolved portion of the recently ratified contract, Capital has learned.

The two sides need to agree on how to pay union members who retired before June 30, 2014, because more teachers left than the contract had accounted for, both sides confirmed.

City Hall had set aside $180 million to pay lump sum retroactive wages to retiring teachers—a figure the union agreed to in June when it signed off on the nine-year deal that runs from 2009-2018. But the higher-than-anticipated retirement rate means the city may need to increase that total and negotiate how retroactive payments will be made to the additional retirees.

...

The union is likely to ask the city for enough money to pay all retirees 100 percent of their back wages at once—the same deal the first batch of retirees covered under the $180 million got. It is unclear whether the city will attempt to stretch out those payments over a period of years.

Capital previously reported 2,263 U.F.T. members applied for retirement in June, up from 1,484 applications in June of last year, according to figures provided by the New York City Teachers' Retirement System. (The figure includes CUNY instructors who are not covered by this contract.) 

... 

The U.F.T. deal was arguably the city's most complicated because the teachers had been without a contract since 2009 and did not receive the 8 percent raises former mayor Michael Bloomberg granted most municipal workers at that time.

In settling the contact, de Blasio's labor negotiators agreed to account for the 8 percent raises in 2 percent increments over a four-year period from 2015 to 2018, as well as pay out the retroactive cash from 2015 to 2020 in five installments, skipping 2016. Those payments will continue beyond the life of the contract.

The city insists the wages are not "retroactive" because they would not be granted to teachers who quit. Instead, the administration refers to them as "restructured payments." Teachers who opted to retire by June 30, 2014, were granted the entire back pay at once.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you negotiate a contract so complicated that it's got a hundred moving parts.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the end - does de Blasio stick to what he negotiated for the contract or does he try and weasel out?

Here's Comes The "Health Care Savings" From City Workers

From the NY Times:

When Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his first labor agreements with New York City unions this spring, he was sharply criticized for granting long-awaited wage increases in exchange for promises of unspecified though sizable savings on health care expenses.

Now, some of the specifics are coming into focus: City officials and union leaders say they hope to push municipal workers to use walk-in clinics more and emergency rooms less, order generic drugs more often than brand-name ones, and buy them through the mail rather than at retail pharmacies to achieve bulk discounts.

The city hopes the unions will agree to steer workers to use centralized, cheaper centers for blood tests, X-rays or M.R.I.s, rather than having those tests performed in doctors’ offices or at costly physician-owned facilities. Patients who resist could face higher copayments, while savings would be passed on to the city in lower premiums.

The cost-cutting comes with high stakes: If the city and unions are unable to save a total of $3.4 billion on health care by 2018, a mediator will be empowered to order increases in workers’ premiums to cover the shortfall, officials said.

As an added inducement, if the unions help the city exceed that goal, the first $365 million in additional savings would be distributed as lump-sum bonuses to workers, officials said. Any savings beyond that would be split evenly between the city and its employees.

The Times article notes that de Blasio did not push for city workers to pay a percentage of salary toward health care contributions - unlike in some of the other union deals made lately:

Missing from the labor contracts with teachers and other city workers that were announced beginning in May was any requirement for union members to begin contributing toward their health insurance premiums. That prompted some critics to say Mr. de Blasio was not being tough enough at the bargaining table.

Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the unions representing 5,400 Long Island Rail Road employees agreed that those workers would begin paying 2 percent of their wages toward their health coverage.

But Mr. Linn said the city would gain far more by trimming health costs than by getting municipal workers to pay the same 2 percent of their wages toward their health premiums. That contribution, he said, would translate into $400 million a year.

“Look at it this way,” Mr. Linn said in an interview. “Isn’t it better to achieve savings so an employer pays $16,000 toward health coverage per worker, than to have a total cost of $20,000 per worker, with the employee contributing $2,000 of that?”

We'll see if the approach the unions took with de Blasio works or not.

The worst case scenario would be to make these cost-cutting moves, then still get stuck in 2018 with paying a percentage of salary to health care anyway.

One thing I know is, once you start paying a percentage of salary toward health care contributions, that contribution goes up every contract.

I think the LIRR union leaders were fools to have given what they gave in their contract - they ate their young on salary progression and pension payments AND they agreed to have workers pay 2% of salary toward health care.

You can bet that 2% of salary for health care will go up next contract - and every contract after that.

The municipal contracts give the city an opening to make workers pay a percentage of salary toward health care - but only if the $3.4 billion in "health care savings" isn't hit by 2018.

The Times reports the "savings" calculation will work this way:

Labor leaders and city officials began the talks on health care cuts in mid-July and are to meet again in early August, with the goal of agreeing on $400 million in health savings this year, $700 million next year, $1 billion the year after that and $1.3 billion in fiscal 2018, for a total of $3.4 billion.

Finally de Blasio labor guy Bob Linn tells the Times the de Blasio approach to health care savings is better than getting workers to pay into health care:

Mr. Linn said some critics of the administration seemed preoccupied with getting employees to pay toward their health insurance premiums, while underestimating workers’ ability to embrace cost-saving, innovative approaches to their health care.

Before joining Mr. de Blasio’s administration, Mr. Linn was a consultant who helped restructure health care services for 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, the giant health care union. He said he was using that deal, which includes central blood and imaging labs, generic drugs and mail-in prescriptions, as a model.

The city’s new agreements create strong incentives for the unions to find savings.

If the prospect of lump-sum bonuses does not do the trick and the unions fail to agree to steps that reach the savings target, then the mediator in the contract dispute with the teachers, Martin F. Scheinman, is to step in and order cost-saving measures to reach that goal. Those measures could include requiring the workers to contribute to their premiums for the first time.

Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, said the potential bonuses could be an important catalyst. 

“We haven’t tried it before,” Ms. Kellermann said. “I think it will motivate the managers of the unions. There’s nothing like getting your members a bonus.”

Mr. Linn said many New Yorkers underestimated the potential benefits of collective bargaining.

“Our approach is, how do you get people to work together and find common interests to achieve savings?” he said. 

“We’ve created a system in which labor and management have a joint incentive to achieve health savings.”

It behooves us to watch closely and see what happens here.

Was This The Best The LIRR Unions Could Do?

Given the leverage the LIRR unions had in their negotiations, it being an election year and all, if these reports are accurate, this is a pretty bad deal:

"Under terms of the deal, current LIRR employees will receive a 17 percent wage increase over six-and-a-half years. The union had been seeking six years, and the MTA seven. To pay for the additional salary expenses, all employees will for the first time contribute to their health insurance, the governor said. New employees will have a different wage progression and retirement contributions. The agreement doesn’t include fare increases, Cuomo said."

If what Cuomo said is what's actually in the deal, then the union leadership conceded on health care contributions and they ate their young on wage progression and retirement contributions.

Those concessions sure do diminish the 17% wage increase over 6.5 years.

I've written this over and over, but I'm going to do so once again:

Making that first-time concession on health care contributions is ALWAYS a loss.

Once you open the door to ANY contributions to health care, you hit the slippery slope of concessions on health care/increased payments from employees EVERY time the contract comes up for re-negotiation.

They couldn't do better than this in an election year with a strike deadline looming?

What Are The Chances Of An LIRR Strike Happening?

Given what happened to Mario Cuomo over an LIRR strike in 1994, the chances that Andrew Cuomo let's this one happen this year are pretty small.

My sense is, the governor will jettison into the negotiations and force a settlement before the strike starts.

What say you out there?

Does the strike go off?

Or does Cuomo jettison in as "savior"?

And if you think Cuomo does jettison in and force a solution, which side do you think comes out the "winner"?

Cuomo Is Full Of Shit

On Monday, Sheriff Andy Cuomo said this about the looming possibility of an LIRR strike because the MTA and the LIRR unions can't come to a contract agreement:

“It’s actually Congress that can end a strike and impose a settlement one way or the other,” he said. “So right now it seems that Congress is pivotal to what happens here, and from what I read in the newspapers it’s going to depend on what Congress intends to do….”

Cuomo added that “Congress can order a settlement, Congress can order mediation, Congress can order arbitration, Congress can do almost whatever they want, because they are in control of the resolution of the strike.”

Here was Cuomo today:

Cuomo thanks NY members of Congress "for making it abundantly clear" Congress won't avert LIRR strike, as per "false belief" by unions.
— Liz Benjamin (@CTLizB) July 9, 2014

False belief put forward by the unions that Congress could help avert the LIRR strike?

The guy who put forward the false belief that Congress could help avert the LIRR strike was Sheriff Andy Cuomo himself.

Stop blaming the unions, Sheriff Andy.

You were the guy who pushed that meme.

UFT Members Spoke: The UFT Leadership Couldn't Do Any Better Than This

 Accountable Talk yesterday:

Technically, the contract passed with 77% of the vote of UFT members. I predicted 75%, which was the exact percentage of teachers who voted yes. School secretaries, paras, and social workers, who are not subject to many of the provisions that regular teachers are, voted almost 85% in favor of the contract, thus skewing my numbers. Well, no one is perfect.

...

 The question here is--what's next? I'd be willing to make another prediction--that we could flip flop the voting results and come up with a pretty good estimate of the number of teachers who had to swallow hard to vote yes on this contract. I'd wager that at least 75% of you really hate this contract--either you voted no or you voted yes because you thought this was the best that your union could do.

And if you are in the latter group, you are sadly correct. This contract is probably the best that Mulgrew and Unity could have done. Which is why they need to go.

The NY Times this morning:

The contract, brokered between city and union officials, passed with more than 77 percent of the roughly 90,000 votes cast, union officials said Tuesday night. Michael F. Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, spent the last month lobbying hard for his members to accept the deal, saying it was the best they could expect.

He faced the most skepticism over two facets of the deal: that the retroactive raises, which total about 8 percent, would be paid out over several years, instead of immediately; and that it promised to reduce health care costs by $1.3 billion. The union said that it could reach that goal by finding more efficient ways to deliver care.

But many teachers said they worried about a provision in the contract that could require them to contribute to their premiums for the first time should the savings come up short.

But few expected the deal would be voted down. The union has rejected a contract only once before, in 1995, when they were asked to accept a two-year wage freeze. After some modifications, teachers approved that deal.

On this contract, teachers mostly agreed with Mr. Mulgrew that this was the best they could get. Some who voted yes also described it as an embrace of Mayor Bill de Blasio, whom they consider friendlier to labor than Mr. Bloomberg, whose emphasis on test scores and pay freezes had raised their ire.

“The last mayor was not very pro-teacher and wasn’t interested in our well being,” said Suzette Freedman, a third-grade teacher at Public School 75, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, who voted for the contract. “There’s not really another option.”

A fourth-grade teacher at the school, Elizabeth Jarrett, said she voted no, as a sort of protest, because there seemed to be so many outstanding questions, particularly about the financing. “But do I think we’re going to get anything better?” she said. “Absolutely not.”

This blog yesterday:

The 2014 contract agreement became the receptacle for a lot of anger and frustration for what has happened to schools, teachers, and the teaching profession over the past decade or so here in NYC.

I think it is important to build on that anger and frustration and turn it into fruitful action against the education deform agenda that is destroying the public school system, the children in that system and the teachers who teach there.

Megan Behrent points out how important it is we build on that anger in a fruitful way, avoiding the trap of demoralization by organizing to take back our schools and our union.

Certainly we can look to Governor Cuomo's re-election campaign and begin to take out some anger and frustration on him.

Our union leaderships ensured that the Working Families Party would not run a candidate against Cuomo from the left, but that doesn't mean teachers, parents and other critics of Cuomo's education reform agenda cannot coalesce around a pro-public education ticket.

Howie Hawkins/Brian Jones Green Party ticket can be just that ticket.

And of course the UFT election is two years away and building on the anger and frustration UFT rank-and-file have displayed the past month to mount a substantial challenge to Michael Mulgrew and his Unity caucus.

Lastly, I'd say building relationships with parents and working together to take on deform, as CTU has done in Chicago, can go a long way toward building a groundswell of support for teachers and public schools in the coming battles against the corporatists looking to privatize the school system for their own benefits.

Don't think the 77% yes vote means all is well in the UFT, the membership is happy with their leadership and it's kumbuya from here on out.

The contract passed with 77% of the vote because many UFT members calculated that this was the best deal that the current leadership could get, that there was nothing in the zeitgeist that said the geniuses who got this agreement deal with the most labor-friendly mayor in a long, long time could get anything better if it were voted down.

But as we can see from the Times article, as you will no doubt hear in your own schools, there is major resentment, anger and frustration over a whole host of issues - from the contract to the UFT leadership to the Common Core to the APPR teacher evaluation system to the treatment of teachers by the DOE and school administrations.

The key to building on that resentment, anger and frustration is convincing UFT members that effective action can be taken to make those issues better for the rank-and-file.

Many UFT members rightly have no confidence in the current UFT leadership to do this.

Now it's MORE's task to convince these UFT members that the MORE caucus can.

Even then, it will be a hard task to take any power away from the current leadership.

They are an entrenched, corrupt power - and they have thousands of retiree votes to keep them that way.

Nonetheless, it is now important to start building on the resentment, anger, frustration or resignation people have over current conditions and make some headway toward taking away some power from the current UFT leadership.

That task starts today in your schools.

Every time circumstances remind teachers in your building of how many rights the UFT leadership has ceded away in the past four contracts, every time administrators attempt to exploit the staff, every time a teacher is unfairly or unjustly treated by a school administration and the UFT leadership does nothing to stop it, remind your colleagues that there is a better way, there is action that can be taken in two years for change.

The message going forward needs to be - this current UFT leadership can't do any better than how they're doing now.

Isn't it time we put into place a new leadership that can?

UFT Contract Vote: Post-Mortem

I went to Ian Hunter's 75th Birthday Celebration this evening at City Winery.

I found out the UFT contract had passed with 77% of the vote just as I got there.

Haven't had a ton of time to think through the post-mortem, but my sense is this:

I think there was a lot of anger and frustration out there over the contract, but clearly not enough to make the vote as close as the 63%-37% from the odious '05 contract.

There is a lot of work to be done to convince UFT rank-and-file that there is a better way than the Unity way going forward.

More tomorrow.

UFT Contract Vote: Predictions And The Roadmap For The Future

Expected to be announced today:

The teachers union’s new $9 billion contract with the city is expected to be ratified Tuesday.

The secret ballots of more than 100,000 eligible members of the United Federation of Teachers will be scanned by the American Arbitration Association in lower Manhattan.

Union officials hope to announce the results by mid-afternoon.

Urban Ed thinks the contract passes with a slim margin, somewhere between 60-40 and 55-45.

James Eterno weighs in:

Virtually everyone thinks the contract will carry with the teachers.  If it is defeated I would be very surprised.  I would also be astonished if it gets 84% approval like the TWU contract did recently. Considering the resources we don't have and what we are up against, anything over 35% would be a success for the opposition forces as I see it.  We'll know later today what happened.

And Megan Behrent of the MORE Caucus explains where to go from here whether the contract is approved or voted down:

As ballots wait to be counted at the American Arbitration Association, much of the media as well as the union leadership anticipate the vast majority of UFT members will vote “yes” to ratify the contract proposal. If that is the case, Mulgrew and the Unity caucus will be quick to declare victory for their “historic” contract.

But regardless of the final count, we need to look beneath the surface of the vote to understand what it reveals about the state of our union. Over the past few weeks, MORE has been part of a groundswell “Vote No” campaign, but rank and file anger was much broader and deeper than those active in any caucus.

...

Ultimately, the key question is how do we build a movement that can draw lessons from our ‘Vote No’ campaign, and encourage a new group of activated members to join MORE in the struggle for union democracy and reform.

Demoralization is one possible response to the ratification of this lousy contract; but organization is far more powerful.

Whatever the final results on the contract turn out to be, the key question remains. How do we save our union and revive a tradition of rank and file activism that puts the struggle for our schools at its center?

We know that if this contract is ratified, in 2018 we will be faced with more of the same, as we will once again be told that there is no money– especially since the majority of retro payments occur in 2019/2020 AFTER the proposed contract expires. The more important question is where will MORE be? Who will be running our union? Our schools? What kind of rank and file base will have? Will we have greater reach and more capacity to fight for the contract we deserve?

We are at an important historical juncture in the battle for our schools: there is a growing national movement for union reform, against standardized testing and against the education deformers. It is this movement that has inspired a growing opt out movement among parents opposed to testing, inspired teachers to boycott administering soul sucking standardized tests, and inspired a growing number of educators to demand more from our union and more from our schools. It is the same movement that has given confidence to people to vote no on this contract. This is a potentially powerful movement that can transform our unions and our schools.

The 2014 contract agreement became the receptacle for a lot of anger and frustration for what has happened to schools, teachers, and the teaching profession over the past decade or so here in NYC.

I think it is important to build on that anger and frustration and turn it into fruitful action against the education deform agenda that is destroying the public school system, the children in that system and the teachers who teach there.

Megan Behrent points out how important it is we build on that anger in a fruitful way, avoiding the trap of demoralization by organizing to take back our schools and our union.

Certainly we can look to Governor Cuomo's re-election campaign and begin to take out some anger and frustration on him.

Our union leaderships ensured that the Working Families Party would not run a candidate against Cuomo from the left, but that doesn't mean teachers, parents and other critics of Cuomo's education reform agenda cannot coalesce around a pro-public education ticket.

Howie Hawkins/Brian Jones Green Party ticket can be just that ticket.

And of course the UFT election is two years away and building on the anger and frustration UFT rank-and-file have displayed the past month to mount a substantial challenge to Michael Mulgrew and his Unity caucus.

Lastly, I'd say building relationships with parents and working together to take on deform, as CTU has done in Chicago, can go a long way toward building a groundswell of support for teachers and public schools in the coming battles against the corporatists looking to privatize the school system for their own benefits.

How Do We Counter The Sophisticated P.R. Operations Of The Corporate Deformers?

The battle over the UFT contract agreement has gotten me thinking about public relations and messaging.

Earlier I wrote a post asking people to start thinking through the p.r. war that is sure to come if the UFT contract agreement is voted down.

My argument basically was this:

Contracts are not negotiated in isolation of the political environment - what gets reported in the press, the propaganda that gets spewed, affects negotiations.

Even more importantly, it affects the kind of support teachers can get from the public on a whole host of things, not just contract negotiations, but school policies, charter vs. trad schools, etc.

We have to start to find effective ways to get our message out in the face of a hostile corporate print press and electronic news media.

This is true not just in this contract fight but in the fight against the corporate reform agenda and its proponents as a whole

What first spurred this on for me was watching the fight between Eva Moskowitz and Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio had the moral high ground here when his chancellor announced that three Success Academies co-locations were being canceled - one of which would have taken space away from special needs kids, another of which would have put young elementary school kids in the same building where high school kids rioted in the recent past.

Despite de Blasio inhabiting the moral high ground in this battle, Moskowitz went on a p.r. offensive worthy of a presidential campaign, reached out to Governor Andrew Cuomo and other charter-friendly politicians with entreaties and campaign cash and, in the end, thoroughly routed de Blasio.

Moskowitz managed to do what GOP consultant Karl Rove always said political campaigns should do - she made her own weakness into a strength and her opponents strength into a weakness.

Eva played the victim here, messaging to the public through press conferences and ads that played over and over that her "kids" were being thrown out onto the street by the charter-hating Mayor de Blasio.

The truth was, Eva was throwing deaf kids out of their school space, but de Blasio and Farina never got that message out to the public and wound up smeared as the villains in the charter wars.

This was a sophisticated and masterful p.r. operation, one that was most certainly helped by the $4 million+ Moskowitz and her hedge fundie friends could spend on ads.

Nonetheless we should not dismiss the masterfulness and sophistication of the Eva p.r. operation just because she had the money to get her message out.

Instead we must find ways to match the sophistication and masterfulness in the messaging wars against the deformers and their destructive agenda, and do it without the help of the money that Moskowitz has behind her.

We know we cannot count on the unions because they are playing for their own interests and those often do not coincide with the interests of teachers looking to protect traditional public schools, the teaching profession, etc.

I stand in awe of what Karen Lewis and CTU managed to do in Chicago, reaching out to parents in a long-term effort to find common cause against the deformers.

I see some of the same happening in the battle against Common Core, the Endless Testing regime and APPR teacher evaluations.

While many parents are not necessarily going to go out of their way to fight for fair evaluations for teachers, they show much more willingness to do so when it becomes apparent that APPR evaluations are behind so much of the Endless Testing.

When it was just teachers complaining about Common Core, the papers were pretty brutal toward CCSS critics.

But when parents joined the protests, suddenly the paper coverage got a lot more nuanced and fair (in Newsday in particular.)

I think there are some lessons here that we can use going forward as we try and combat the messaging of the deformers in the p.r. wars.

More and more, I am becoming convinced that we must get more sophisticated and masterful in how we approach the p.r. wars against the deform movement - not just in the contract battle, but in the whole "war" against corporate reform.

I know there is a lot of anger and fury among teachers that has been building up for over a decade.

I share this anger and fury with you.

I don't think coming from a place of anger and fury is a terribly effective way to actually get the outcomes we want, either short-term or long-term, however.

So, finding a way to channel our anger and fury and get a coherent message out despite the millions of dollars the other side has for p.r. - this must be our task going forward.

What Comes After?

There's a lot of talk in schools and around the Internet about voting the UFT contract agreement down and forcing de Blasio to give teachers a better deal in a second agreement.

People say this will show the public that teachers are starting to stand up for themselves, they're not going to take getting humiliated or beaten up by the politicians or press anymore.

I have also heard how teachers voted a contract down in 1995 and got a better deal the second time around, so voting this contract down will mean a better deal.

I fear that there is some magical thinking going on among some of the "Vote No!" folks that all we have to do is send a message to the mayor, our union heads and the public that we want a better contract by voting this one down and we will, in the end, get one.

I'm a little concerned that we're expending an awful lot of energy and thought on why the contract should be voted down, how to get it voted down, but not nearly enough on the "What comes after...?" question.

There's a scene in The Godfather where Clemenza the capo is tutoring Michael Corleone on what to do after he shoots a crooked cop and gangster who set up his father, Vito, to be killed.

Michael is told to simply drop the gun, walk out to a waiting car and go off to Sicily while the rest of the family "goes to mattresses" and takes the heat.

Michael asks Clemenza how bad things are going to get after he murders the crooked cop and gangster.

Clemenza says "Pretty goddam bad. But that's all right. These things have got to happen every once in a while...every five years...ten...helps to get rid of the bad blood..."

People who are voting "no" have got to be ready for how goddamn bad things are going to get if and when the contract is voted down because it is going to get very rough afterwards and if we're not careful, the aftermath could do more harm to the cause of teachers than good.

The press will be brutal ("Greedy teachers vote down 18% contract, want more!!!") and de Blasio is going to be pissed that his "signature" contract and early first term accomplishment got voted down (and, perhaps, be less friendly toward teachers as a consequence.)

We had better be ready for this.

Let's take the press first - you know the coverage is going to be brutal if the contract is voted down. The Murdoch outlets are going to hammer teachers as greedy scum, the Daily News won't be far behind and Marcia Kramer and others will have plenty of pieces on the airwaves blasting teachers too.

The UFT leadership isn't the best at countering negative press coverage even when it's in their interest to do so - you can bet they're not going to do it if the contract they negotiated is voted down and teachers are getting hammered by the media for it.

So, what is the strategy post-vote for teachers to get their message out to the public about why we voted the contract down when the corporate-owned press is spewing out a "Greedy Teachers!" meme day and night to the public and the UFT leadership is doing nothing to counter it?

Do we think we can counter that "Greedy Teachers!" meme from the corporate press on our social media sites with tweets, Facebook posts and blog pieces?

Do we think we can counter that "Greedy Teachers!" meme by giving press conferences that are sparsely attended by media people and given little press coverage except for a Schoolbook post at WNYC and a mention on Gotham Charter Schools?

In Chicago, CTU was able to garner a lot of public support for their strike because they had an ongoing relationship with parents that they had built over time.

Also, the Chicago teachers were striking over issues that parents and students were affected by - class size, school closures, etc.

Here in NYC, the UFT has purposely run itself as a top-down union and there has been little outreach to parents and the public.

It is true that MORE is a little better at this than the leadership, but even there I wouldn't say there is a relationship with the public and parents where we can say a substantial portion of them will give us the benefit of the doubt in the face of mass smearing from the corporate press if and when we vote the contract down.

So, first point is, how do we counter the firestorm we will have in the media after the contract is voted down? What's the plan to get our points out to the public in the face of a hostile media and hostile UFT leadership?

Next point is, what happens to our relationship with de Blasio?

Currently we have a mayor who is mostly friendly and in sync with teachers - for the first time in a long time.

We could have had either Christine Quinn or Anthony Weiner at City Hall and I can tell you that both of those candidates planned few changes to the public school system from the Bloomberg Years.

De Blasio, for all his faults, is planning changes that I think will make the system better for students and educators.

Two things happen for de Blasio when we vote the contract down:

First, we weaken de Blasio politically, as his "signature" first labor deal that he is basing his whole budget on goes up in smoke and he's going to get lambasted in the press over that (he's already taking hits over the budget and Comptroller Stringer's forcing him to make an accounting change relating to retiring teachers.)

Second, we piss de Blasio off and may discover later on he is not so friendly to teachers anymore.

The first point is an important one - as I say, for all his faults, de Blasio is looking like he is going to be a good mayor for schools, students, and teachers.

It is in our long-term interests to help him politically so that he stays in office for a while.

We know that the corporate deform folks are mobilizing against him - if that wasn't obvious in the Eva/de Blasio charter war, I don't know what was - and we know that they are going to look to take him out in 2017 and put a pro-charter, pro-reform mayor in his place. Eva Moskowitz herself has suggested she might run in the future.

We do political damage to de Blasio when we vote this contract down and we have to figure out a way to mitigate that damage as much as possible because it is in our political interest to do so.

The second point is important too - de Blasio is not going to be too happy with us if we vote this down and he may decide if we are going to hurt him politically, there is less reason for him to help us going forward. I doubt he turns into Quinn or Weiner (both of whom I believe would have ultimately turned out hostile toward teachers - not as hostile as Bloomberg, but not as friendly as de Blasio either), but I bet he gets colder toward us in the future.

While I am in no way suggesting we should take a bad contract so we can prop de Blasio up politically or keep him happy with us, I am saying that we had better think about the long-term political consequences if we vote the contract agreement down and have a plan to deal with them afterwards.

How do we handle our relationship with de Blasio afterward so that it is still productive and not fraught with hostility and animosity? How do we help him politically so that he is not unduly weakened by having his "signature" labor contract and early-first term accomplishment sent back to him with "No thanks!" on it? How do we ensure that we keep a mayor friendly to public education in City Hall for more than one term and not find ourselves staring at Mayor Moskowitz (or, more likely, some Moskowitz-friendly mayor) in four years?

I don't have answers to these questions, but I want to raise them because I am not hearing much from the contract opposition that makes me think people are thinking these points through - and they are important ones.

Teachers are unhappy with the contract for a whole host of very good reasons.

Teachers want to send a message to Mulgrew, the political and economic elites and the public that they're mad as hell and don't want to take it anymore.

I get that and I feel it myself.

Alas, I'm not sure those messages are going to get across without planning and organizing in advance to get them across.

It's not enough to just say "Vote no!" and expect things will work out fine.

If the contract gets voted down, things get very complicated very quickly.

It's hard to predict how they turn out but I think there's a good chance that voting the contract down could boomerang on teachers if we are not careful how we handle the "What Comes After...?" question.

From what I see right now, we're not being careful at all about the "What Comes After...?" but just focusing on the fight to get the contract voted down and then engaging in some magical thinking that it just will work out better because it has to, because it did in 1995.

The truth is, it doesn't "have" to work out better - we have to MAKE IT work out better by making sure we can get our message out to the public over the shrillness of the corporate media, making sure we let de Blasio know it's nothing personal, we still want to work together, making sure that we don't do permanent political damage to a mayor who is friendly to traditional public schools and making sure we can counter the rhetoric from the fiscal watchdog concern trolls that the city can't "afford" a better contract for teachers so voting the contract down doesn't get us just another version of the same contract we have now.

Like I said earlier, I don't have the answers for how to handle these problems, but I know we ought to start turning our attention to them so we're ready to handle what comes after.

Why Won't UFT Leadership Debate The Teachers Contract Agreement?

It's not too difficult, really - if the agreement is so good, then the UFT leadership ought to send somebody out to debate the contract agreement at Francis Lewis High School this week.

But apparently the UFT leadership are scared to do so, since they not only won't debate the contract, they won't even acknowledge that there is another side in the union that wants to debate the contract agreement.

Makes you wonder what they're scared of?

I suspect they are scared not only that people will see the rhetoric they're issuing around the contract is empty, they'll also see the leadership itself is empty.

What say you out there?

Why won't the UFT leadership debate the contract agreement?

Will The UFT Leadership Publicly Debate The Contract Proposal?

NYC Educator posted the following this morning:

On Friday I decided it would be a good idea to have a forum in which both sides of the contract proposal are examined. I asked my friend Julie Cavanagh if she would be interested in presenting the con side, and she agreed. I went to my principal and asked if we could use the school auditorium. He said if we got a permit and did so after school hours it was fine.

I then happened to be speaking to Geoff Decker from Chalkbeat NY, and he offered to moderate if we could find a time to fit his schedule. We envisioned either that a panel of him, me and someone pro-contract to select questions from the audience. We wanted to do something balanced. I asked my district rep, who said this would have to go before a UFT officer. So I wrote the following email to Janella Hinds, UFT VP for Academic High Schools:

Hi Janella,

We are trying to organize a forum on the contract, and are thinking about doing it next Thursday afternoon at FLHS. My committee would get a permit, and anyone who wished to co-sponsor could help pay. We think it will be between 100-300, depending on how large a room we use, with auditorium at 300.

We envision a pro and con speaker, equal opening and closing statements, and questions from the crowd taken by a committee consisting of one pro, one con, and one non-partisan, perhaps Geoff Decker of Chalkbeat NY. We envision giving each speaker equal time to answer each question.

Do you think UFT would be interested in participating in such a forum?

Arthur

NYC Educator reports that thus far, there has been no response from the UFT leadership.

Now to be fair, the email went out on Friday and chances are, many of the UFT leadership were already well into their weekend cups and unavailable for response.

But I for one would like to hear the UFT leadership agree to the public debate of the contract proposal - and if the UFT leadership are so sure this proposal "scrapes the skies" it's so good, they ought to come to the public debate and demonstrate it to the rest of us.

As NYC Educator wrote:

If they have such great faith they've made a good decision, it behooves them to subject it to the sunlight of reasonable scrutiny.

If it's such a great deal, why wouldn't they jump at the opportunity? If we bloggers and opponents are spouting myths, as UFT President Mike Mulgrew repeatedly told the DA last Wednesday, why doesn't he grab this, a golden opportunity to demonstrate it?

Indeed.

Here's hoping the UFT leadership takes the opportunity to publicly debate the pros and cons of the contract proposal.

But I won't hold my breath waiting for this to happen.

A union leadership as top-down autocratic and Stalinst as this one isn't big on submitting to public scrutiny or debates they cannot control.

De Blasio Says UFT Contract Agreement Sets Pattern For Rest Of Unions, NYC Budget

This sounds like a mayor who thinks he's a UFT rank-and-file that's going along with the contract proposal:

After reaching a preliminary deal with the United Federation of Teachers last week, Mayor Bill de Blasio presented his $73.9 billion executive budget on Thursday as a "real budget" based on a presumed pattern from the U.F.T. deal.

De Blasio's proposal allocated roughly $5.5 billion to settle labor contracts over five years.

...

De Blasio described the U.F.T. deal, which has been recommended by the union's leadership but not yet ratified as a template for negotiations with the other 151 municipal unions, though several uniform-union labor leaders have said they believe the wage increases are insufficient.

"If I've ever seen a pattern, this is a pattern," de Blasio said, later adding, "We feel very confident this pattern will hold throughout the process."

It will be interesting to see how confident they feel at City Hall (and 52 Broadway, for that matter) if the UFT rank-and-file vote the contract down.

There's a lot of anger out there over it and while I have seen some pretty bad contracts in my time as a teacher pass by fairly large margins, there are two differences this time around from, say, the odious '05 contract vote.

First, all the teachers on social media passing along negatives about the contract proposal means the UFT does not control the message around the issue the way they do the debate at the DA.

It's hard to tell definitely from the blogosphere and the twitterverse just how strong the opposition to the contract is, but from what I can see, there is a potent element of opposition out there.

Second, teachers have taken a lot of beatings over the last nine years since the '05 contract - from the media beatings to the Bloomberg budgets (layoff threats every May!) to the Bloomberg closures to the Common Core to the teacher evaluation changes.

This contract is quickly becoming the repository of every bit of frustration and anger teachers are feeling over all the issues I just named above and more.

I hear that talking to teachers at school, many of whom I would term "apolitical" when it comes to union issues in general who are quite skeptical of the contract and say they are voting no on it.

De Blasio may say this proposal sets the pattern for the other 151 unions, but he doesn't seem to realize how pissed off teachers are and how this contract could get voted down.

The UFT leadership realizes it, however, which is why they filibustered the Delegates Assembly yesterday and allowed no dissenting voices to raise questions about the contract details.

Underneath all the bluster Mulgrew showed at the DA yesterday, there was clearly fear that they don't quite have as much control over this contract vote as they want the rest of us to think they do.

Mulgrew Gets Definitive At The DA: No Paying For Health Care

There was a leaked memo going around that said city workers will pay a percentage of their salaries toward health care as per a "savings" agreement made between the city and the Municipal Labor Committee.

Here's how the payments will work according to the memo:

Salary <$30,000	Contribution Percentage of Salary 0.0%
$30,000 - $40,000	0.5%
$40,000 - $50,000	1.0%
$50,000 - $60,000	1.5%
$60,000+	2.0%

Now before you think this is just some Internet conspiracy thing and the leaked memo is phony, Capital NY also reports that city employees paying a percentage of their salaries for health care is indeed on the table:

POTENTIAL HEALTH CARE PROBLEM IN U.F.T. DEAL -- Capital’s Dan Goldberg and Sally Goldenberg: Despite assurances from leaders of the city teachers' union that members “should not” have to pay more toward their health insurance as a result of their agreement with the de Blasio administration, that remains a possibility. Both the United Federation of Teachers and City Hall regard it as a last resort, something of a stick to encourage members to find other sources of health care savings to reach the targeted $1.3 billion over four years. But it has not been ruled out, and teachers could be asked to contribute as much as 2 percent of their salary to pay for benefits. In public, U.F.T. president Michael Mulgrew made it sound as if there was no chance that teachers would have to pay for their health benefits. The U.F.T.’s delegate assembly approved the contract deal on Wednesday night. http://goo.gl/2kxOjF

A colleague from school attended the Delegates Assembly yesterday, took notes at the meeting and reported back that UFT President Mulgrew was adamant that teachers would not be paying into their health care as part of this UFT contract proposal.

My colleague said that Mulgrew said the leaked memo was not something the unions had agreed to, that it had come from the city, that in any case one union could not agree to such a change, that it is the function of the Municipal Labor Committee as a whole to do so.

My colleague said that Mulgrew and the UFT leadership drew a line in the sand at the DA and said, unequivocally, members will not be paying premiums for health care as a result of this contract deal.

I am going to be very blunt about this paying for health care story:

If Mulgrew and the UFT are misrepresenting the "health care savings" in either the contract agreement or the backing vote by the Municipal Labor Committee and are preparing to get the rank-and-file a "generous" 2% salary increase next year only to take it right back for health care contributions, there will be hell to pay.

There is a lot of anger out there over the contract already, the delayed compensation, the "retro" that really isn't retro but future compensation for decade-old work (which you need to still be working for to get) and the changes to some of the work rules, including the ATR provisions and the "65% can opt out of the contract" provision.

My sense is that despite the anger from many in the membership over the contract, enough will vote yes for this contract proposal to pass it because A) they need the money, B) they think it will get passed no matter how they vote anyway and C) in the end will be concerned about what the UFT will negotiate if this gets voted down (HINT: could be worse - a meme put out there already by the UFT leadership and the Unity caucus.)

In short, the usual reasons why bad contracts have passed in the past.

But if the UFT leadership has agreed to a stealth health care payment and aren't being open and honest with the membership about it before the contract vote, I think you will see a major revolt in the ranks against the leadership.

Yes, the UFT rank-and-file have passively submitted to every slap and punch they've gotten from the NYCDOE and the UFT in the 13 years I have been a teacher, but I think they will hit a bridge too far if the UFT gets the membership a 2% "raise" next year and the city takes it right back for health care contributions.

What say you out there?

What have you heard about this stealth health care increase the UFT is allegedly spring on us?

Do you think the UFT, the rest of the unions and the city are playing a fast one on the rank-and-file, telling us there will be no payments up front for health care only to hit us with a 0.5%-2% payment of total salary once the contract is passed and the pattern is settled?

I have a difficult time seeing even the UFT leadership being this deceptive and dishonest, especially since this kind of betrayal would be the very kind of thing that most members would never forget.

Maybe Mulgrew might still think he could win re-election pulling that kind of fast one, but I bet an opposition from MORE running on the "Mulgrew Lied To Your Face And You Can See The Evidence Of That In Your Pay Stub" platform could beat him - especially since he was so emphatic about no health care payments at yesterday's DA.

But having been around for almost 13 years, nothing would totally surprise me anymore, so it's a question that needed to be put out there and asked.

That I even need to write this post speaks to how little trust there is for the current UFT leadership, the deals they make and the words they speak.

If it turns out Mulgrew and the leadership are lying about the stealth health care increase, we will use these words Mulgrew and his leadership spoke at yesterday's DA to drive home once and for all to the rank-and-file that the current UFT leadership are cheats and liars and it is time to clean house and bring in somebody who will truly represent the rank-and-file rather than just their own interests and privilege.