Insurgent UFT Retiree and Para Slates WIN BIG! -- Mulgrew and Barr's Unity caucus suffers great losses.

AAA certifies the landslide wins of Retiree Advocate slate in UFT retiree chapter election and of Fix Para Pay in UFT para chapter election. RA garners 63% of vote. FPP takes nearly 75% of votes.

In historic and unprecedented fashion, UFT opposition retiree and paraprofessional slates, Retiree Advocate and Fix Para Pay, ousted Michael Mulgrew’s and LeRoy Barr’s incumbent Unity caucus from its decades long unilateral control of leadership over these two UFT functional chapters.

The American Arbitration Association, which helps oversee and conduct our union elections, officially certified the chapters’ vote counts this week.

In the UFT Retired Teachers Chapter election, the Retiree Advocate slate received 17227 votes, or 63 percent of the total, while Unity, which is aligned with UFT President Michael Mulgrew, got 10,115 votes. Retiree Advocate ran over 300 delegate candidates, including Bennett Fischer as chapter chair, focusing primarily over the controversial issue of city retirees being forced into an inferior, predatory and privatized Medicare Advantage plan that was proposed and designed by Mulgrew and the City. (See final results here.)

In the UFT Paraprofessional Chapter election, the Fix Para Pay slate received 2516 votes, or nearly 75% of the total, while Unity only mustered 892 votes. Fix Para Pay’s campaign focused on fighting for a living wage, higher and equitable longevity raises, and improving other working conditions and benefits of New York City’s paras. (See final results here.)

The impact of these chapter election wins cannot be overstated. These two chapters are union pillars that have been under Unity’s 60 year control of iron-fisted union leadership. The effects are positively cataclysmic and will reverberate within our union, now, and in next year’s UFT general election.

The voices of the rank and file are abundantly clear. Their mandate is too.

Don’t mess with our healthcare without our consent. Preserve traditional retiree Medicare and fix para pay, now! Fight for us, not against us.

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Retiree Advocate’s Bennet Fischer, shared this message regarding the RA win:

Hi Folks,

Wow.

It's a new day in the UFT Retired Teachers Chapter and a new day in the UFT.

A good day. A very good day.

For three years now, retirees have been fighting for our lives: Fighting for the health benefits that we earned; fighting against the privatization of our healthcare; fighting for the traditional Medicare and Supplemental insurance that we were promised. And, fighting for the health and wellbeing of our future UFT colleagues-in-retirement.

The Retiree Advocate slate has won this election, 63% to 37%. The unofficial slate total is 17,226 to 10,114. Let's move on together in unity (small "u") in both continuity and transition.

It was a tough campaign, and we couldn't have gotten here without the tireless efforts of everyone who pitched in to help - the fierce retirees who joined our slate, who showed up at meetings and rallies, who lobbied the City Council to protect our healthcare, who supported the NYCOPSR lawsuits that have protected our health benefits, and who made valuable connections with generations of UFT retirees who felt betrayed and abandoned by our union. Thank you.

We, as one chapter out of many, will not have the ability to unilaterally set UFT policy, but we will now have an independent voice in the union halls and the Delegate Assembly. We will now have real chapter meetings with real debate. We will make our voices heard, not in favor of faction, but in support of Union.

And I promise all my UFT brothers and sisters that we will protect and nourish the institutions and services that we've all built together. We're not tearing anything down. Our pension benefits and our Welfare Fund, our SHIP benefits, our retiree political action infrastructures, the Member Assistance Program, the Retiree Legal Plan, our Si Beagle activities, and the new, Retired Paraprofessionals Support Program will continue. We are, after all, the UFT.

I hope to see you at the RTC meeting on Tuesday, and I hope we'll march together in the UFT section at the Pride Parade on June 30th. And at the Labor Parade in September.

Those things are important. But the most important thing will be working together at every single RTC meeting and Delegate Assembly in the coming years, to make our chapter and our union stronger and better.

Cheers & love,

Bennett Fischer

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Here is Fix Para Pay’s message:

We are honored and humbled to announce that our slate, FIX PARA PAY, has WON the paraprofessional chapter election! This victory belongs to all of us who have tirelessly and professionally campaigned for a better future for our union.

While we celebrate this victory, we recognize that there is a significant amount of work ahead. The next few weeks will be dedicated to planning for the upcoming challenges in September, but most importantly, we will use this time to listen to you, our members. Your voices and concerns are the most important thing as we chart the course for our collective future.

Together, we will work towards building a stronger, more united union. Thank you for your trust and support in FIX PARA PAY!

Let's get to work.

In harmony,

Your new leaders

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The media has begun to take notice about these developments. Here are some recently published articles:

Daily News - Bitter fight inside UFT over NYC Medicare Advantage proposal propels opposition slate to victory

NY Post - Retired NYC teachers toss out union prez's crew in furor over Medicare coverage

The Chief Leader - Insurgent slate wins UFT retiree chapter election

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Change is here. It’s time for our union to become a FIGHTING UNION, once more.

One that places and advocates for our members and schools communities, first — rather than Unity’s partisan patronage and machine politics.

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