The 2024 UFT Leadership Election is Underway

Back in my UFT rep days I always told school reps never to complain without a proposed solution or a pathway to a solution. One of the current union caucuses advised voting against the contract and “preparing for a strike,” For me a strike is a lemming’s solution and not a viable pathway.

New York State is unique, public employee contracts never expire, contracts remain in “full force and effect” until the successor contract is negotiated, known as the Triborough Doctrine. Teachers continue to receive salary steps and seniority raises after the end date of the contract. The Taylor Law both prohibits strikes, 2 for 1 payroll deductions, loss of dues checkoff as penalties as well as on the plus side mediation, public fact-finding and non-binding arbitration.  There are thousands of public employee unions across the state and no strikes. If both sides cannot reach a settlement they can continue negotiating or avail themselves of the state processes, or, as the UFT did under Bloomberg, wait for the next mayor to be elected. Yes, a few states do not prohibit strikes. [See California PERB here and Illinois here]

Thanks for reading Ed in the Apple! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

The legality of teacher strikes vary from state to state …. 12 states have explicitly stated that teacher strikes are legal. These states are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.  

Teachers and their organizations have a long history of fighting among themselves in lieu of fighting together against the latest assault by the “bad guys.” be they hedge fund entrepreneurs or charter school empires or the rich and powerful or De Santis/Trump or the Milton Freedman devotees.

Teacher unions have internally hassled since their inception.

In the depth of the Great Depression the New York City Teachers Union, Local 5 (TU), was expelled by the American Federation of Teachers (AFL) for communist affiliation. (See Clarence Taylor’s favorable history of the Teachers Union here). The Teachers Union and the Teacher Guild vied for members until the McCarthy pogrom of the early fifties resulted in the passage of the Feinberg Law which required that all teachers take a loyalty oath – swearing they were not and had never been a member of the communist party. The Supreme Court (6-3) ruled the law constitutional, hundreds of teachers were fired and the Teacher Union as a viable caucus faded away.

In 1959 evening high school teachers “withheld services,” a strike, and received raises although under the law at the time, the Condin-Wadlin Law, strikes were punishable by firings.

In 1960 a faction of the Teacher Guild and the High School Teachers Association merged to form the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), read brief history here and here.

The UFT from its earliest days has been divided into caucuses, in the 60s the divisive issues were the Vietnam: should he union take a position on the war?  After years of contentious debate a referendum was held:   A slim majority favored no position. Should the union be limited to education and labor or wider social issues? Martin Luther King was a John Dewey Award winner, teachers traveled to the South in the summers to teach in Freedom Schools. The Department of Education embarked on a school busing integration plan, once again, an internally divisive issue. Read, Richard Kahlenberg, Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy and David Rogers, 110 Livingston Street: Politics and Bureaucracy and the NYS School System.

A forty-day strike in 1968 over the authority of local boards to fire teachers divided both the union and city over racial lines. Watch Albert Shanker reference in Woody Allen film “Sleeper” here.

In 1969 the education system was decentralized into 32 quasi independent school districts and the UFT also decentralized locally electing union leaders in the 32 districts.

In 1975 the city precipitously laid off 14,000 teachers, the union went on strike, the city was edging towards declaring bankruptcy and the union ended the strike after five days, and loaned the city pension funds to avert bankruptcy, highly unpopular at the time, appreciated later. “How the unions saved the city from bankruptcy” Read here.

Union leadership moved from Shanker to Sandy Feldman to Randi Weingarten to Michael Mulgrew, all members of the Unity caucus. Other caucuses ebbed and flowed, and currently a number of caucuses actively opposing the current Mulgrew caucus.

 In my union rep days a few teachers urged me to rip the superintendent publicly at school board meetings. I realized I represented the angry members and the members with problems, and, I needed the superintendent to resolve individual issues. Someone needs an emergency leave, a payroll problem, a certification issue, I needed the superintendent’s staff to expeditiously resolve issues, and fighting with the superintendent was not the pathway. 

Superintendents meet with principals and parent association leaders monthly: why not meet with UFT Chapter Leaders?  The superintendent came to appreciate the meetings with Chapter Leaders; teachers were truth tellers while the principals simply nodded yes, and, school union leaders “chatting” with the superintendent led to collaboration across the district.

Teacher union elections, whether to elect school union leaders or union officers are referendums on leadership and the campaign has begun,

I don’t think “preparing for a strike” is a pathway to resolving disputes.

Next spring union members will cast ballots, let the best ideas win.