Back in the day any UFT Delegate could propose a bargaining demand, the list of demands was long, really long. A delegate came to the microphone, “Al, if we get everything how much would it cost?” (Snickers from the audience), Shanker stepped back, seemed to be computing, returned to the microphone, “A gold ball the size of the Earth.”
This reads like something a professional union buster would write. All you'd have to do is replace 'strike' with 'union activity,' and boom. The message is 'accept what the City gives you, union tactics will make it worse.' As I've said before, the teachers unions that have striked today, as opposed to during the 1975 fiscal crisis, have won. In NYC, it's the approach of merely 'strongly encouraging' that is keeping our raises below inflation and putting our healthcare at risk. I'm not romantacizing a strike, but the consequences you suggest look like a right-wing science fiction movie.
As was demonstrated by the cutback in health coverage for retirees, the MLC is very powerful. Instead of just the UFT walking out in a strike, all members of the MLC should be brothers and also walk out. Then we win what we want in less than one whole day. The government is strangling unions, time for those unions to strike back.
“Aside from a caucus within the union there is no enthusiasm for a strike. The penalties are onerous and for many teachers the relationship to students and families is crucial.” Peter, who from Unity is paying you to put out all of this blatantly false anti-strike propaganda? “Strike” is on the lips of every single teacher I speak with at my school, a very small fraction of whom are with “that caucus”. Unity shouts down every single person who raises the issue in the delegate assembly and does everything in their power to stifle any and all discussion on the matter. How dare you say there is no enthusiasm for a strike when it isn’t allowed to ever be discussed? You know what else is crucial in addition to student and parent relationships? Being able to afford rents that are increasing 25% yearly on average in Brooklyn. Shame on you. So sick of seeing your articles in my inbox.
strikes get the goods. retirees are naturally less concerned with raises and working conditions than are active teachers, but this is giving michael mulgrew.
What I don’t understand is why the only strike that seems to be brought up for remembrance is the one that failed. How about the strikes that won much of the rights we enjoy now? (which are slowly being bargained away by Unity for nothing). There’s a difference between going on strike and being strike ready. When your employer, whose goal is to give you as little as possible while extracting as much of your labor as possible, already knows that you will never withhold that labor no matter how poorly they treat you, they understand that they have all of the leverage. It’s like showing up to a gun fight with some nail clippers. All of this anti-strike propaganda focuses on history from the 1970s while IGNORING the history of 2023. Los Angeles teachers will be receiving 9% yearly raises over the next three years and they didn’t even have to strike. They are just STRIKE READY.
I was one of those 14,000 laid off after striking in '75. When I finally got my job back, months later, I was docked two days for every day I was on strike, making the whole experience very onerous. Still, I believed in the union, and fought for our rights and benefits. Now, retired, alas, I have to fight to retain the health benefits I thought I'd have for life.
I was very upset when after the fiasco in ‘75 Shankar claimed he had been against the strike but had led the Madison Square Garden strike vote despite that. My union brothers and sisters had believed that Shanker, at that time one of the most successful union leaders in America following multiple successful strikes, was calling them out for what turned into a debacle. We not only paid two days for one but our loan was repaid by the great enemy of teachers, Koch, in drive and drabs over many years so that the enormous inflation of those times ate up the value of our dollars.
This reads like something a professional union buster would write. All you'd have to do is replace 'strike' with 'union activity,' and boom. The message is 'accept what the City gives you, union tactics will make it worse.' As I've said before, the teachers unions that have striked today, as opposed to during the 1975 fiscal crisis, have won. In NYC, it's the approach of merely 'strongly encouraging' that is keeping our raises below inflation and putting our healthcare at risk. I'm not romantacizing a strike, but the consequences you suggest look like a right-wing science fiction movie.
As was demonstrated by the cutback in health coverage for retirees, the MLC is very powerful. Instead of just the UFT walking out in a strike, all members of the MLC should be brothers and also walk out. Then we win what we want in less than one whole day. The government is strangling unions, time for those unions to strike back.
“Aside from a caucus within the union there is no enthusiasm for a strike. The penalties are onerous and for many teachers the relationship to students and families is crucial.” Peter, who from Unity is paying you to put out all of this blatantly false anti-strike propaganda? “Strike” is on the lips of every single teacher I speak with at my school, a very small fraction of whom are with “that caucus”. Unity shouts down every single person who raises the issue in the delegate assembly and does everything in their power to stifle any and all discussion on the matter. How dare you say there is no enthusiasm for a strike when it isn’t allowed to ever be discussed? You know what else is crucial in addition to student and parent relationships? Being able to afford rents that are increasing 25% yearly on average in Brooklyn. Shame on you. So sick of seeing your articles in my inbox.
strikes get the goods. retirees are naturally less concerned with raises and working conditions than are active teachers, but this is giving michael mulgrew.
What I don’t understand is why the only strike that seems to be brought up for remembrance is the one that failed. How about the strikes that won much of the rights we enjoy now? (which are slowly being bargained away by Unity for nothing). There’s a difference between going on strike and being strike ready. When your employer, whose goal is to give you as little as possible while extracting as much of your labor as possible, already knows that you will never withhold that labor no matter how poorly they treat you, they understand that they have all of the leverage. It’s like showing up to a gun fight with some nail clippers. All of this anti-strike propaganda focuses on history from the 1970s while IGNORING the history of 2023. Los Angeles teachers will be receiving 9% yearly raises over the next three years and they didn’t even have to strike. They are just STRIKE READY.
I was one of those 14,000 laid off after striking in '75. When I finally got my job back, months later, I was docked two days for every day I was on strike, making the whole experience very onerous. Still, I believed in the union, and fought for our rights and benefits. Now, retired, alas, I have to fight to retain the health benefits I thought I'd have for life.
I was very upset when after the fiasco in ‘75 Shankar claimed he had been against the strike but had led the Madison Square Garden strike vote despite that. My union brothers and sisters had believed that Shanker, at that time one of the most successful union leaders in America following multiple successful strikes, was calling them out for what turned into a debacle. We not only paid two days for one but our loan was repaid by the great enemy of teachers, Koch, in drive and drabs over many years so that the enormous inflation of those times ate up the value of our dollars.