Endgame: State Legislature, the City Budget and the UFT Contract
Endgame: State Legislature, the City Budget and the UFT Contract
I was online at an upscale supermarket on Saturday, wearing an AFT t-shirt, it struck me, how many people know why Monday, Memorial Day is a national holiday, so, I asked the guy behind me on line, we chatted, he saw my shirt and asked if I was a teacher, he was a college professor, I told him I was a union activist, he said, “I love my union.” It made my day.
Public education, teachers and teacher unions are under an unrelenting assault. Mike Pompeo, former Trump Secretary of State called Randi Weingarten, “The most dangerous person in the world,”
“I tell the story often — I get asked ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’ The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten,”
From DeSantis to Trump, from innumerable state legislatures to local school boards controlled by religious zealots and nationalists, the attacks are unrelenting, and, not by accident. You probably read George Orwell’s, dystopian novel 1984 in the middle or high school, who thought that we might be living in a world of thought police. State after state is passing voucher legislation: private, charter, parochial and home schooling parents receive a share of state aid dollars to defray education costs reducing the dollars allocated for public schools. Books are pruned from library shelves, teachers are prohibited from teaching “challenging,” perhaps uncomfortable and definitely meaningful topics.
The defenders of public education are teacher unions, parents and allied advocacy and civil rights organizations, and Diane Ravitch.
The attacks are well funded, the Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision allows for unlimited and unregulated “independent expenditures.”
Even in New York State, the most heavily unionized state in the nation, public schools are at risk. In 2018 Governor Cuomo won by 24%, Governor Hochul, running against an uber-Trumper won by 5.5% with the vigorous support of the teacher unions. After the election Hochul scooped up the charter school “pieces of silver,” five million from Bloomberg and removed the regional charter school cap in her budget, after a month long battle the cap remained. It would have created 100 new charter schools in New York City at the cost of thousands of union teaching jobs.
Politics is about policy and relationships, building trust and working collaboratively.
The UFT has responded to the charter school assault by introducing a number of bills,
Limit charter school grade level expansions (S2974/A6561)
Make the Board of Regents the sole authorizer in the state (S1395/A4502)
Stop using public funds to pay for private facility space rented by NYC charters (S2137/A5672)
Pass the Charter School Transparency and Accountability Act (S4466/A4458)
In the Assembly the bills are sponsored by Michael Benedetto, the chair of the Assembly Education Committee and in the Senate by Shelly Mayer the chair of the Education Committee, John Liu, the chair of the NYC Education Committee and Brad Holyman, a public school parent.
The key electeds and the teacher unions have worked together for years, built trust, the bills await passage, whether Governor Hochul signs the bills, or vetoes, to be determined (See process here).
The legislature adjourns on June 8th.
Another goal, statewide, is changing the current Tier 6, currently retirement with full benefits at age 63, no one will be eligible to retire for decades, and, the new members of the state legislature also fall under Tier 6, as the number of Tier 6 legislators grows the pressure to reduce the retirement age will come from within the legislature as well as from state employee unions.
The New York City budget must be approved by the end of June, public hearings have been held, the Council and the Mayor are still sparring, The Mayor threatened education cuts of 3%, after growing opposition from the Council and across the city the Mayor relented, Chalkbeat reports,
New York City schools won’t have to brace for budget cuts next school year — at least at first.
All schools will receive the same amount of money or more at the start of the 2023-24 academic year as they did this year despite some of the “fiscal challenges” facing the city, Chancellor David Banks announced .. during a City Council hearing about the education department’s proposed budget for next fiscal year.
But school budgets may not need the extra cushion this year. Unlike the significant drops over the past few years, the education department is projecting enrollment to largely hold steady next year, dipping by less than 1%
Council member Joseph is chair of the Council Education Committee and a former teacher and UFT member.
The unions, parents and a host of advocates bombarded the council members with apparently the right results.
While the UFT contract expired in the fall, in New York State expired public employee contracts remain in “full force and effect” until the successor contract is ratified. The UFT and Adams/Banks have ratcheted up the negotiations, “teach-ins,” leafleting, local demonstrations, thousands of teachers participating, and critics within the union setting prerequisites before approving any contract and some calling for strike actions and changing the law to permit teacher strikes.
The UFT was born out of a merger of contending factions and caucuses within the union are a sign of vibrancy.
Strikes, however, are unwittingly empowering the opposition to unions, building union strength means building coalitions and teacher strikes chase away the very folks who are natural allies. A little history,
… the Industrial Workers of the World. Founded in 1905, the Wobblies set forth on a revolutionary mission. By engaging in frequent strikes and constant agitation, they would gradually persuade wage earners of every race, immigrant group, and gender to join their “One Big Union.” By demonstrating their ability to wrest higher pay and better treatment from recalcitrant employers, workers led by the Wobblies would learn the virtue of class solidarity. Then, some glorious day, the IWW predicted, all this organizing would pay off: Workers would show their bosses the door, take possession of every factory, mine, warehouse, and office, and run the economy for the benefit of all.
The “Wobblies” were crushed by the police, the National Guard and management goons, delaying the rise of unionism for decades.
We can do without our coffee and boycott Starbucks, use US Postal Service to deliver packages, parents and other advocates look on teacher strikes as an attack on their children, strikes without parent and advocate support would be fatal to teacher unions and public schools.
The ballot box, building coalitions, working together, alliances, rebuild the coalitions that created the civil rights legislation that is being eroded by the Supreme Court and state legislatures. In other words, Solidarity Forever.
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn
That the union makes us strong