A UFT member who wishes to remain anon. sends me this.
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Turbolo:
Your take on the NY teacher contract agreement borrows from the "facts are bourgeois" school of writing. One hundred and thirty-three teachers at its height (out of a membership of 150,000) picketed the UFT, not 200. The vote at the Delegate Assembly was 4-1, not 2-1. The "No" vote will not likely be substantial, unless you think 15-20 percent is substantial, and I'm being generous with that calculation. We'll know soon enough who is right, as the vote results will be announced by the American Arbitration Association on Nov 3, five days before the city election. NOT after the election, as you say. The 15 percent raise will not be doled out over 52 months; 11 percent will be in everyone's paycheck Nov 1, retroactive to May 2003. A final 4 percent kicks in next year. The 52 mo. contract expires in two years. Want more?
The raise may be the "sum and substance" of your knowledge, but the terms were covered extensively by the micTimes and Newsday, adequately by the News, and summarily by the Post. It's also in the union paper, both the actual text of the MOA, a summary and a news story, and on the Web site www.uft.org and extensively debated on the union's blog www.edwize.org. If money is much discussed, it's because that's what's on members' minds, and for good reason. Their last raise was in 2002. There is no 37.5 additional hours in the school day, there is just 10. The two extra days in the year are paydays, not charity. The disciplinary letters are no slam dunk for the school administration. At present, letters can only ever be removed if grieved successfully. Under the new agreement, they have a three-year shelf life, period. And any good chapter leader (of which there are many) knows how--and does--get them removed without going to arbitration.
Were there concessions? Yes. Reducing the seniority transfer, which is extremely popular among minority parents who want senior teachers restricted from transferring out of low-performing schools, was a hard hit for members. The union's position has always been to retain transfer rights but to pay incentives to keep teachers in hard-to-staff schools, something that was done before Bloomberg with the extended-time schools. The union couldn't win it back. Does that constitute a sell-out? Does this agreement constitute a sellout because it keeps up with inflation and more, but doesn't yet match suburban salaries? Only if you're a political flack.
This contract round didn't begin the spate of concessionary bargaining. It's been a fact of life in one form or another since the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. In this round, city unions had a Bloombergian choice. More hours, cuts in health and pension benefits or a lower-starting salary for "the unborn," that is, the yet-to-be-hired. Is that a reflection of the lack of principles and fiestiness of trade union leadership. Maybe in the case of the Sanit contract, where dollars were dangerously exchanged for safety conditions, in my opinion. Maybe in the case of DC 37, which settled too soon and for too little, though even in both cases it's a tough call. It's much more a reflection of the level of class struggle city, state and nationwide. I only wish the crisis of mankind in NYC were the crisis of leadership. That would be a better problem. There may be a tactical case that the unions could have hung tougher, or prepared to go to the mattresses much, much earlier. Turbolo doesn't make it. No wonder: it's great propaganda to blame a class of misleaders, but a tough argument to make honestly. -- Michael Pugliese