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.

Should The Buffalo Teachers Federation And NYSUT Go To Court Over Union Busting In Buffalo?

It has been reported in various places that the Buffalo Teachers Federation, with the help of NYSUT, are looking at taking the state to court over the powers that were granted to the Buffalo schools superintendent to break the union contract in five "struggling" schools.

Here's Keshia Clukey at Politico NY with a statement from NYSUT on that:

“At this point in time, NYSUT’s attorneys are looking at every available option and we’ll take any action that’s needed to ensure we defend our teachers’ and our parents’ voice,” NYSUT President Karen Magee said Tuesday. The Buffalo Teachers Federation falls under the umbrella of NYSUT.

...

“The thing that concerns me the most about the commissioner’s decision is it basically mirrors the rushed implementation of the Common Core,” Magee said. “You would think that the engagement process and the right to collectively bargain would be one of the most respected pieces to turn around a school.”

A Perdido Street School reader worries about the outcome of such legal action:

It's clear that taking this to courts has risks that are simply beyond reasonable. The decision to take it to the courts is a reflection of the lack of creativity of ALL NYSUT LEADERSHIP, as well as their lack of knowledge and understanding about some of the most basic and essential history and thinking regarding union organizing and action.

We are, in fact, already losing. That is correct. However, at this point, we must not fully lose our ability to think clearly. If we do lose the case, and it seems fairly clear that its stacked in favor of that, we will not only have lost in Buffalo, but the entire process of placing schools in receivership and tossing union contracts is then part of the jurisprudence of the State of New York, and therefore ESTABLISHED LAW. That's not just losing....that's escalating, magnifying, and putting your loss on steroids. That's how things happen that take generations to undo.

This thinking that the courts are where we need to be are a particular symptom of a total lack of understanding of the labor movement and labor history. Unions, organizing, and labor action exist because of the ASSUMPTION that the courts can be and in fact ARE a reflection of the power structures they exist in and offer no "unbiased" look at such cases. Unions exist to organize and take action precisely to avoid courts for the most part....BECAUSE IT IS THERE, IN COURTROOMS, THAT AWFUL ANTI-WORKER POLICIES CAN BE EMBEDDED INTO LAW WITHOUT GOING THROUGH THE USUAL AND MORE PUBLIC PROCESS OF CREATING LAW IN LEGISLATURES!!

Elia and Cuomo and all the reformers would love all this to go to the courts.....its their home territory. They can get law written without all the fuss! Why do you think basically all the reformers love taking things to the courts??

Harris Lirtzman thinks a political solution might be the better course of action here but doesn't think we have the union leadership required to carry such action out:

Our "grievance" is, indeed, a political one.

Whatever one thinks of Elia she is simply doing what the amendments to State Education Law in 2014 proposed by Andrew Cuomo require her to do when there is a conflict between the receiver and the union over CBAs for receivership schools.

Because we live in a state with the Taylor Law, we cannot legally strike. Yes, of course, we can "strike" but at the cost of potentially ruinous financial penalties against NYSUT and "two days per strike day" charges against individual teachers. Yes, again, many of us might like to ruin NYSUT financially but it's hard for me to believe that NYSUT or the membership would authorize and support a strike over receivership schools--the days of "union solidarity forever" and "we shall not be moved" are long gone.

The Transit Workers Union went on a ten day strike in December 2006 which had no, nada, zip public support and it collapsed with nothing to show for it except huge penalties against the Local, loss of dues check-off for two years and fines against members--most of those eventually reduced by the judge.

Unless the "Heavy Hearters" really screwed up the drafting of the legislation for the receivership provisions it's hard to see how this case turns out well for us.

Seems to me two choices:

1. Work politically to get the legislation changed or to defeat in 2016 members of the legislature who voted for it.

2. Take action--perhaps even non-violent direct action--to bring about a crisis in the local political structure sufficient to cause elected officials to change education policy.

Either one of these approaches will have required our unions, specifically, and our members, more generally, to have done the hard, sloggy, unpleasant organizing work to mobilize the members and to educate parents and the general public about the issues involved.

What do you think will happen? I used to believe that the political system could be changed or that direct-action, creatively done, could create the sort of "crisis" that leads to change. I no longer do and I especially no longer do if any of that involves NYSUT, the UFT or the membership-at-large.

Lastly, a reader points out the abysmal rep the NYSUT legal team have:

WHAAAAAAT????????

There is a reason anybody who knows tells you to NEVER use NYSUT legal if you get jammed up...always hire someone yourself. On the micro level of dealing with teacher legal issues, they are known to suck.

On the macro level of shepherding a case of this magnitude through the courts successfully they have NO (zero, 0, none) track record of success.

NYSUT legal is a huge part of our problem. Talk about cushy jobs....NYSUT legal is made up of elite educated lawyers pretending at having a hardcore lefty union gig. They have offered no help, advice, or anything to our cause.

NYSUT legal is beyond a joke and deeply part of the problem.

So many ways a legal case here could go wrong - it's almost as if the union leadership at both BTF and NYSUT are double agents, trying to make it look like they're fighting for the rights of their members while for all practical purposes extending the power and policies of the deformers.

On second thought, check that.

There's no "as if" - as Sean Crowley noted in this comment:

I fear any direct union action will have to be taken without the support or benediction of the double retirees of NYSUT's so called leadership. They don't want to jeopardize one drop of their own precious fat by involving themselves in anything that could be construed as a job action. As noted above the legal dodge they have made into an artform will satisfy whichever box they have to check off on their rubric that proves they demonstrated interest in the rank and file. I think maybe some more phone calls to the White House, another dozen Nae Nae videos and a strongly worded letter or two will be about the most NYSUT can be expected to contribute. This one is going to have to be rank and file driven.

The best course to me here is to have the receivership law changed through the legislative process but given that NYSUT didn't fight Cuomo's imposition of the law much in the first place, I am under no illusions that they'll work very hard to do this.

Rather, they might just take the worst possible action imagined so as to, as the first reader quoted above said, make "the entire process of placing schools in receivership and tossing union contracts is then part of the jurisprudence of the State of New York, and therefore ESTABLISHED LAW."

Indeed, with the tenure/seniority lawsuit already here in the courts here in NY coupled with the receivership suit BTF/NYSUT may take forward, you can see a point in the near future where tenure, seniority protections, and local school control are all abolished and union contracts not worth the paper they're printed on since the state and/or the district will have the power to supersede and/or circumvent them.