Tag: nysut

NYSUT’s VOTE-COPE “Campaign” Highlights What is Wrong with NYSUT

Two years ago, with NYSUT’s failure to oppose Governor Cuomo serving as “the straw that broke the camel’s back” PJSTA members followed the lead of their officers and stopped contributing to VOTE-COPE, the statewide union’s voluntary political action fund.  PJSTA President Beth Dimino has been vocal in describing her reasons for not contributing and this has drawn the ire of many Unity Caucus loyalists.  You’ll surely recall that last year Unity (the controlling caucus within NYSUT) used it’s blog to launch a personal attack at Dimino, labeling her “anti-union” among other things.

So this year NYSUT decided it’d try to step around Dimino in an attempt to solicit VOTE-COPE contributions from the PJSTA membership by sending out a form letter to each of our members asking for us to give to VOTE-COPE this year.  I want to be clear here… I do not have a problem with the leadership stepping around Ms. Dimino to approach our members about this.  The PJSTA membership made a strong statement about their confidence in NYSUT’s political action work when our members made their decisions to reduce their VOTE-COPE contributions to $0.  I would expect that to catch the attention of NYSUT leadership and I would expect them to want to contact those members about their decision.

The problem I have with their tactic comes in their chosen form of communication.  Nearly two full years after reducing our contributions, leadership’s response was to send each of our members a form letter.  There was no attempt to engage our members in discussion about our decision.  No reaching out to gauge our feelings on our statewide union, or to ask how they can better represent us.  No discussions about the broken union structures that lead to disengaged members.  No explanations for why they have generously donated to ed deformers like Andrew Cuomo and John Flanagan.  Just a simple form letter asking us to give them more money.  To be frank I found it insulting.  The idea that a form letter with all the usual rhetoric was going to suddenly sway me was simply astounding.

After reflecting on it, I think this incident really highlights some of the major problems with our statewide union.  Virtually all contact I have ever had with NYSUT is one-way communication where messages from the top are relayed down to me.  There is nearly zero back and forth.  No chance to engage our leaders in discussion about the state of our union.  No visits from the NYSUT officers to our schools to ask questions or to simply listen.  Sending form letters to request greater VOTE-COPE contributions is the very essence of top down unionism.  It’s ineffective, expensive, and does nothing to serve our members.

The fact that this happens is the result of of a broken union structure.  Andy Pallotta’s PAC work has resulted in teachers being held “accountable” via junk science through poorly constructed teacher evaluations over the past several years.  However there is no accountability for Andy Pallotta.  I am not sure whether or not STCaucus plans to run a slate in the coming NYSUT elections, but it doesn’t really matter.  Pallotta will run again for a NYSUT officer position again this spring and he will win.  This will likely be the case for a few of our other officers as well.  They are in a situation where they can’t lose because they will have the endorsement of the Unity Caucus.  In NYSUT’s rigged system of democracy the only thing that matters is the Unity endorsement.  The will of the members won’t matter.  The PJSTA membership’s VOTE-COPE reduction, which essentially amounted to a vote of no confidence in our leadership, won’t even be a blip on the radar when it comes to the election.

This is the type of stuff that turns people off to unions.  This is why it gets easy to become disengaged and apathetic.  I’ve had a lot of discussions about this sort of scenario with members across the state.  I’ll close with the gist of what I put in an email earlier today to one of those members about the only way I see to go forward and the only way that I can see transforming our union…

I think the way forward is to take our focus off of resolutions, leadership positions, and the NYSUT bureaucracy and focus solely on engaging and organizing the rank and file.  I think an engaged and active R&F will ultimately have a greater impact on the state’s public ed landscape than having a great leader at the top working within the same structure that has lead to a disengaged and apathetic membership to begin with.  By grassroots organizing you can ultimately increase your leadership capacity across the state and begin to cultivate local leaders who will challenge for leadership and delegate positions in areas that have traditionally been Unity strongholds (Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Yonkers, UUP, PSC, etc.).  That is how you ultimately might win leadership positions within NYSUT.  More importantly, in the process, you will have organically grown an engaged, fighting union who is more powerful than we have ever knowN it to be.  It is a long slog for sure, with a tremendous number of obstacles in the way, and it requires the sort of person-to-person organizing that is neither glamorous or rapid in nature, but I believe it is the only way forward for us.

 

Beth Dimino Letter to NYSUT Officers

Dear NYSUT Officers,
On behalf of the Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association, I wish to alert you to our concern about your approach to the NYSUT/PSA negotiations. It appears to the PJSTA that you are needlessly and recklessly creating a dispute with the bargaining unit and, as a consequence, threatening the services provided to the PJSTA on a daily basis. We ask that you treat PSA with the respect it deserves and work diligently to find solutions to this contract dispute that will not imperil the delivery of NYSUT services to my local by the PSA staff.

The PJSTA is also concerned about your misrepresentation of NYSUT’s financial situation at the most recent Representative Assembly, where no mention of any pension crisis was mentioned. I know that the officers are provided routine reports on the NYSUT pension as required by law, so we are confused as to why the long-term pension cost suddenly became a crisis. Your actions leave the PJSTA wondering where the truth lies and whether we can trust your financial representations to your dues-paying members.

It is our expectation that you work with PSA in a way that would be viewed as a model to the labor movement and refrain from adopting the tired and unproductive behavior of our worst employers. We demand that you work to conclude this contract dispute in a way that will not further embarrass that PJSTA and will not interrupt the crucial services that PSA members provide.

In Solidarity,

Beth Dimino, PJSTA President

Summer Musings Part II- Examining Our Union Structures

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Last week I published my “Summer Musings Part I” post in which I posed a number of questions…

As I begin to wrap my head around the idea of the 2016-2017 school year, I do so with the question in mind of how do we raise teacher voice across New York State and beyond?  How do we empower our members at the very grassroots level?  How do we better engage our membership at the local, state, and national levels in a way that allows the members to drive the union agendas?  How do we create union cultures that encourage membership participation and what exactly does that participation look like?  How do we create times and places to facilitate discussions among the rank and file about what our unions are vs. what they actually should be?  How do we build more democratic unions and how do we overcome the obstacles that stand in the path of union democracy?  How do we turn our unions from passive unions or unions who simply mobilize around top down mandates into unions who have rank and file organizing at the very heart of their operation?

Like our many readers assuredly have (haha), I’ve been giving a good deal of thought to those questions over the past week or so.  Several of those questions tend to overlap with each other, so I am not necessarily going to write to each of those questions, but more share some of the thoughts that have been running through my head as I ponder those questions.

One concept that I keep coming back to is the concept of union structures.  It seems to me that the structures of our unions, in many cases, are prohibitive to what a union’s goals should be.

An empowered rank and file should ultimately be the result of of a membership who has had ample opportunity to engage with one another and with union leadership on what their shared values are and on what they expect from their union in regards to those values.  These opportunities for engagement should be frequent, whether they be causal or formal meetings, and should allow for deep and meaningful thought and discussion from all parties.  They should allow for participants to ponder the causes of issues that effect our schools and communities along with the long term implications of these issues or potential plans of action.  Meetings such as these, with no dominant voice, rather a respectful exchange of ideas from all participants, allow all members to have a greater role.  They allow the union to move forward as a collective, organized around a set of shared values, rather than as a leadership pulling a membership along.

In smaller locals like ours it is more common to witness these sorts of structures.  While the PJSTA certainly isn’t structured like my ideal scenario above, we do have regular building meetings where members are free to express concerns and share opinions.  Our leadership is in the schools every day, not only available to have personal and informal conversations with the membership, but in the trenches teaching with the same working conditions that our members are.  As a vice-president who is largely tasked with coordinating our local’s organizing endeavors, it is my personal goal to move us more in the direction of my stated ideal above.

Often where structures really start to become problematic are in larger locals, like the ones often found in cities, and in our statewide and national unions.  The larger the union, it seems, the more problematic we find the union structures.  Let’s take NYSUT, our statewide union, as an example.  I am wracking my brain and I can’t, for the life of me, recall a time that NYSUT asked me, as a rank and file member, what issues were important to me.  I can’t recall a time where they have provided space for in depth discussion between members on the issues that we face or on more philosophical ideas about how our union should function.  Virtually all of my interaction with NYSUT throughout my 14 years as a member has been different varieties of one-way communication.  I have received mandates from the leadership on what I should fax or email, what I should say to my elected officials, who I should vote for, or scripts I should read to others on the phone.  This is literally the opposite of empowering.  Rather it sends the message to me as a member that my ideas and opinions are inconsequential and that engaging me isn’t important.  I simply exist as a tool to do the bidding of our leadership.

In January I emailed NYSUT President Karen Magee with questions along these lines and I was basically told it was none of my business.  There have been very few times in my career when a NYSUT officer has visited our local and when they have it was never to engage the membership, only to talk at them and then usually ask for an increase in VOTE-COPE contributions.

When I attend the RA as a delegate most of the discussion centers around resolutions brought to the floor.  Precious little debate takes place before a Unity Caucus member typically calls the question to shut down discussion and then the motion is voted on.  If you are not first on line (out of more than 2,000 delegates) at a microphone to speak, it usually means you don’t get to speak.  In general the resolutions are fairly meaningless to the general membership anyway (Quick, count how many NYSUT resolutions have impacted you in the classroom?  I bet you can count them on one hand!)  The rest of the RA typically consists of the VOTE-COPE guy asking us to give more VOTE-COPE, and maybe a candidate our leadership is pushing who talks at us (this year it was Hillary Clinton).

I can go on and on about the issues I have with NYSUT, but I don’t think that’s necessary.  Clearly NYSUT is very top down in nature and it’s entire structure stifles discussion about the issues that effect us and does more to encourage members to disengage than it does to empower them.  The same can be said about the AFT on the national level.

What I find to be most appalling is that these sorts of structures typically tend to be by design.  I don’t believe that the leaders of NYSUT and the AFT are necessarily interested in hearing from the membership.  I don’t believe that they are actively seeking out ways to empower and engage the rank and file.  I don’t think that they have any interest in establishing rules that make our unions more democratic.  To do any of these things would be to put themselves and the power that they have accrued at risk.  It would endanger their seat at the table.  To be honest, there are not many people who would want to give up salaries of hundreds of thousands of dollars, expense accounts, double pensions, and seats at national conventions.  The bigger problem is the structures that are put in place allowing these leaders to run our unions as they do for an indefinite period of time without having to answer to the membership in a meaningful way.  When you allow those in power to make the rules and create the structures, these are the sorts of situations you find yourself in.

There are no easy solutions to this problem and there are no shortcuts.  Electing new leadership (virtually impossible in NYSUT because of the elections rigged in favor of whomever Unity Caucus endorses) isn’t a real solution due to the likelihood of new leaders falling into the same traps as previous ones due to the fact that they are operating within the same flawed structure.  Any structure that relies upon humans resisting the temptation to be bought off is likely doomed to fail.

In June I was sitting in a meeting with members of other locals and the topic of our flawed leadership came up.  How they haven’t done enough to help us in regards to certain issues. While I agree to an extent, I don’t find the individual leaders to be the problem.  It isn’t Karen Magee, Andy Pallotta, or Mike Mulgrew.  It’s the union structure that has allowed it to happen.  You can plug in virtually anyone and get very similar results.  Which is why the answer is not changing leadership.

I firmly believe that the answer to the problem of our union structures begins in our schools at the worksite.  It starts with building new structures within our buildings and locals that are more democratic in nature and that empower our membership.  When we create organizing unions that emphasize democracy and teacher empowerment we create an extremely powerful union and the leadership ultimately doesn’t matter.  It isn’t easy and it isn’t glamorous and it is often tedious.  But it is the most important work that a union can do.  If this sort of work were done extensively statewide, our statewide union would ultimately change.

So join me this year in working to reshape your unions.  We’ll be working on ways to better engage members in deeper discussions, identify shared values, and empower members.  Feel free, as always, to share your ideas with us!

Jia Lee Reports on AFT Convention

The PJSTA did not send our delegates to the AFT Convention this year.  So I asked our friend Jia Lee to share her observations of the convention with us.  They will be published elsewhere as well.  Here are Jia’s take aways from the convention…

AFT July 2016- Observations of a Rank and File Member

By Jia Lee

UFT Chapter Leader of The Earth School

Every two years, the American Federation of Teachers, convenes to address proposals for resolutions and positions we take as a national union. Seven non-Unity members from New York City, headed to Minneapolis, for the AFT convention on its 100th Anniversary. Arthur Goldstein of MORE and Jonathan Halabi of New Action, two of the seven newly elected high school executive board members, joined Norm Scott to report the events from the press section. You can find the links to their blogs below. Gloria Brandman, Lisa North and Gladys Sotomayor, all veterans of NYC public schools and members of MORE were present at general sessions, leafletting and networking with members from other locals. For me, being present in this space to support the reporting out of what goes on is just as important as being in solidarity with locals who need to know that there are other voices coming out of NYC besides that of the Unity stronghold.

 

To put things into perspective, while it is important to know how issues are brought to the convention and subsequently, how decisions are made, it is even more important to understand how immensely it connects to rank and file members back at home. We are the untapped power. For those of us who know little to nothing about how it works, here’s a little overview:

Out of 2,608 delegates in the AFT, representing locals from New York to California, the UFT sends 750 delegates to this level of our union. Yes, this is very NYC heavy. With the small number of delegates from the rest of New York State, many of whom are unable to afford the trip, our representation is often viewed as insurmountable. Delegates from different locals meet in nine different committees where most resolutions are debated and voted on. In between, there are general sessions where all delegates come together to debate and vote on the top three resolutions as a body, special acknowledgements and elections for AFT officers and panel presentations. The seven of us carried visitor passes since we are not elected delegates but we are AFT members via our local.

As one can imagine, there are many orders of business and activities that we could share, but here are three stark take-aways about the purposeful lack of democracy from this convention everyone should know, as dues paying members.

1. Our UFT Constitution needs to be amended. We handed out a MORE -AFT 2016 Edition flier explaining to fellow AFT members that while our high school exec board candidates won seats, they do not carry AFT delegate status. It is written in our constitution that winner takes all. This, in fact, ignores the fact that we won nearly 30% of the votes. When we tell this to other unions, many are surprised. Delegates from other locals reported that these positions are voted on separately. Why was this written into our constitution one may ask? It clearly ensures a block vote. The implications call for a change to representational percentages amongst delegates

2. The UFT/Unity does in fact control NYSUT, and this needs to change. It seems that to dominate the national scene, it is imperative for the largest local to also control the state. We learned that Ed Representatives which represent districts across the state, are nearly all Unity. It was written into the constitution at the state level that ed representatives do not have to necessarily live in the region it purportedly represents; therefore, Unity can and has put up their own candidates when they feel like. Because of the loyalty oath and disproportionate number of delegates we represent, whoever Unity puts in, is guaranteed a win. This contributes to the unfair advantage at the state and national levels. Locals across the state find this frustratingly unfair and undemocratic.

It plays out in divisive ways by creating an imbalance in representation electorally and subsequently has consequences at the state and at the national level. At this year’s AFT convention, at the convening of the Educational Issues Committee, something disturbing occurred. Almost everyone knows that NYSUT (our state union) passed Stronger Together’s (ST caucus)  proposed resolution on opt out called I-Refuse at last year’s state-wide convention. A version of this was prepared by a committee within NYSUT for the AFT convention. It was printed in the resolutions packet on the first day of the AFT.

Just moments before raising the resolution, Karen Magee, our NYSUT president pulled out a substitute resolution that was entirely different from the original. Even the title was changed from “Support the I-Refuse Movement to Oppose High Stakes Testing” to “End the Misuse of Testing and Support Teacher and Parent Rights.” In effect, all of the strong and actionable resolves of the former resolution were removed and in its place was a much diluted version that upheld standardized tests as useful when not misused and supported the rights of parents to opt their children out of the tests and for teachers to explain these rights without fear of penalty. It did not support teachers as agents of change as the I-Refuse resolution did. Jilted, fellow NYSUT members of the ST caucus objected to the substitution which was overruled. The Unity stronghold had prepared for this, keeping the ST members in the dark. The substitute resolution passed.

3. AFT Leadership controls the membership. This must change. We are a top down driven union. The international relations and domestic positions of the Democratic Party, and specifically Hillary Clinton (who was present and gave a very disappointing speech about supporting public charter schools) shaped the convention. It was tightly controlled.

For instance, during the debate over the resolution to support the teachers of Oaxaca who have risen in massive numbers to strike against the privatization of their public schools, a teacher from California rose to distinguish, for members, the difference between supporting the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (SNTE) and the Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE). The national union El SNTE has been in collusion with the government in its attack on teachers in Oaxaca, resulting in the violence that has led to the killings of teachers. She went on to state that the blood of those teachers would be on the AFT if it supported the SNTE.

Mary Cathryn Ricker,  AFT Vice President, rose to speak against this. She said that it was not true, “The SNTE is not responsible…” This red herring argument derailed what the teacher was stating. Though the SNTE may not be responsible, they have been in collusion. For those who are not as informed, this was enough to downplay this very real problem.

In the “Fighting for Safe Communities and Racial Justice for Our Citizens and our First Responders” I was very intrigued to find that the resolution included lines that members found problematic. For instance, “Whereas, the AFT supports all police officers who perform the duty of serving us daily in the name of public safety;” and “Resolved, that the AFT will collaborate with unions representing police and public safety officers in the law enforcement community to advocate for fair policing through greater transparency and accountability, which will lead to safer communities;” was heavily debated on the floor. In a following analysis, I will share some ideas on how this debate detracts from the discussion needed to understand the fundamental changes needed to shift a culture of implicit racial bias and machismo (or patriarchy) that create conditions for disproportionate targeting and brutality of Black community members. One member pointed out that just as there is a police union, union members are victims of brutality. There is so much more to this issue than what lies on the surface, but it will not be discussed at an AFT convention.

However, at the AFT, the chair took liberties that clearly did not follow Robert’s Rules of Order, and at times, it seemed fair and at other times, it was clearly strategically unfair. In the end, the resolutions passed as intended, without the fortitude to muster true alliances and actions to enact real change to our daily lives as teachers. I should add that watching Randi Weingarten, the AFT president, chair all general sessions, was exhausting. She must control the pulpit, and this is, not so oddly, familiar. The Clinton endorsement shaped the landscape and, as usual, the leadership subdued the membership. The work of maintaining control at the NYC level contributes to maintaining the whims of a very ambitious and relentless AFT president.

In reflective conversations with folks from other unions at the UCORE event, it was said on multiple occasions that at the end of the day, resolutions are a piece of paper. Instead, we discussed the need for a different vision of unionism as we build our base, member by member, school by school. This requires that we continue to do the kind of self education and teach ins on the issues that slipped so easily through at the AFT. Envisioning a different way to enact democracy within our union is a must, or we are in danger of replicating the undemocratic ways of our present and past. What this means involves a real analysis of how race relations have played out through the positions of union leaders, as well as, developing structures different from the ones we know.

Catch Norm’s Reporting

And Arthur’s observations:

http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/from-aft-2016-resistance-is-futile.html

http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/uft-folk-do-darndest-things.html

http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/clinton-at-aft-lets-learn-from-public.html

http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/in-which-uft-unity-member-lectures-me.html

http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/social-justice-is-for-everyone.html

http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/mulgrew-demands-apology-for-my-little.html

http://nyceducator.com/2016/07/happy-days-redux.html

Jonathan: https://jd2718.org/

 

Endorsed Candidates for School Board Elections

You can click here to access the list of school board candidates who have been endorsed by the teacher union locals in those districts.  This includes every local on Long Island who has shared their endorsements with us.

Additionally you can click here to see the candidates who have been endorsed by Long Island Opt-Out.

Contribute to Defeat Mulgrew

I have written in great detail about the harm that Michael Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus inflict not only upon their local union, the United Federation of Teachers, but upon unionized teachers across New York State and beyond.  Fortunately this is an election year for the UFT and Mulgrew has a very formidable challenger in noted public education activist Jia Lee.

Lee needs no introduction to most advocates of public education.  She has been on the front lines of the fight against high stakes testing, junk science teacher evaluations, and the struggle for more democratic unions at all levels.  In 2015 she travelled on her own dime to Washington DC and she quite eloquently represented public school teachers in the United States Senate.  PJSTA members will remember her as our keynote speaker at the PJSTA Conference Day last year.  She was one of the first conscientious objectors in New York State when she began refusing to administer the rigged New York State assessments in 2014 and she is one of the authors of the Teachers of Conscience Position Paper.  As someone who is fortunate enough to call Jia a friend, I can share that she is the real deal when it comes to public education advocacy.  She breathes activism.  In addition to the tireless efforts she has put into the opt-out campaigns and working for union democracy, Jia is a dynamic teacher at New York City’s Earth School and she has been a tremendous professional resource to me, sharing countless things from her classroom that my students have then been able to benefit from.  If such a thing as an education superhero exists that person is Jia Lee.  You can click here to access one of Jia’s flyers to share widely with your public ed allies.

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Beth Dimino, Jia Lee, Brian St. Pierre. Lee is running against Michael Mulgrew for UFT President.

This election is about more than just Jia, however.  Jia is simply running at the top of a slate of candidates being put forth by two UFT Caucuses.  Those two caucuses (MORE and New Action) are tired of seeing their union compromise and collaborate with reformers bent on destroying us.  They are ready to transform the UFT into a member driven union that represents the teachers in the classroom rather than the union “leaders” with personal agendas.  While that sort of transformation would certainly benefit New York City’s classroom teachers, it’s benefits would stretch far beyond that as well.  It would significantly alter the direction of our statewide union, NYSUT, and our national union, the AFT.  As the local that is by far the largest in the country (several times larger than the second biggest), the UFT’s leadership wields extraordinary power within the teacher union landscape.  They impact virtually every unionized teacher in the United States.  The leadership of the UFT is the largest reason why unions have supported the Common Core and test based teacher evaluations.  They were the ones urging state legislators to vote in favor of the Education Transformation Act last year!  As a matter of fact, much of Unity Caucus’ (the caucus representing the UFT leadership) campaign in this year’s election has even centered upon their support for the evaluation plan in which 50% is made up of test scores.

Clearly anyone who supports public education has a stake in this year’s UFT election.  Nobody can ignore it and think that it only impacts teachers in the five boroughs.  This election will impact every teacher, student, and parent across the state.  With that in mind I will ask that all of you head on over right now to make a donation to the MORE Caucus and their election fund.  Unseating the biggest bully on the public education landscape can’t be done by simply “liking” something on Facebook or retweeting a link on Twitter.  It will take money too.  So give what you can, even if it is only a small amount.  Finally, be sure to ask your friends who support public education to do the same.

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Who is Best Equipped for Friedrichs Ruling?

Lois Weiner, an education professor at New Jersey City University and a noted teacher union activist recently wrote a really fantastic piece on the impact Friedrichs will have on teacher unions.  Check it out below.

Via New Politics…

Much has been written about the harm the Supreme Court will wreak on US labor if it overturns the right of public sector unions to charge nonmembers a fee equal to the cost of the union’s expenses in representing them. Pundits on the left and the right have predicted a cataclysm. Will it “decimate” labor? Is it likely a “killing field for unions.” Ironically, Supreme Court Justice Scalia (as David Moberg noted) is one of the few people who has identified how unions are actually weakened by representing “free riders,” workers who haven’t been persuaded that they should join the union.  It’s significant that Friedrichs targets the California Teachers Association because the case continues the intense teacher and teacher-union bashing that has characterized political rhetoric and policy about education reform in California, across the US and globally, from Democrats and Republicans. The Right has demonized teachers unions because they can be formidable opponents. Teachers and their unions are the best organized, most stable opponents of policies privatizing public education.  As was evident from the 2012 strike of the Chicago Teachers Union, teachers unions that adopt a “social justice” orientation and are committed to building the union at the workplace (school site) can challenge the political status quo in ways other unions have not been able to do for many years.

However, despite – and because of – the ferocity of the attacks on teachers’ wages, benefits and professional autonomy, teacher unionism is being reborn. Activist teachers are growing reform caucuses committed to transforming their unions in almost every major US city. From Philadelphia to Seattle, Boston to San Francisco, Massachusetts to Los Angeles, a new generation of teacher union activists is taking on — and down — the old guard.

The reformers’ contestation is a serious challenge to the current union leaders, who must balance their self-conception as power brokers, nipping at the edges of the reforms pushed for public education (more privatization; standardized testing used to control what is taught and how; loss of due process protections for teachers), with members’ increasing militancy. Increasing numbers of teachers don’t want a “seat at the table” because they see their jobs threatened, schools closed, kids hurt by seemingly “practical” deals the union negotiates. The increasingly successful challenges to teacher union leaders who have controlled their locals for decades explains why the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)bulletin to members about Friedrichs eschews the grim predictions of most pundits. While noting the harm Friedrichs can do, the union argues it will weather a loss of agency fee — by organizing.

Members infuriated with the choice of AFT and the NEA (National Education Association) leaders to protect their access to the Obama administration instead of launching an offensive to turn back policies teachers feel hurt the profession and kids, especially linking teacher salaries to students’ standardized test scores, are not going to placated by the unions’ new interest in organizing. Many teachers feel betrayed, deserted, by the organizations they looked to for support of the profession and public education.

Friedrichs will do the most harm to the unions that are most bureaucratic, that have relied on the legal right to collect fees rather than do political education — organizing — of members. A ruling against the unions in Friedrichs won’t retard the organizing we see in Detroit, by teachers who staged a “sick out”that closed the system — without their union’s help. A loss in Friedrichs won’t halt the momentum of Organize2020, the social justice reformers in the North Carolina teachers union, who don’t have collective bargaining, let alone agency fee. Their organizing occurs side by side with civil rights activists. The fight to raise the wages of low paid workers is as much a concern for these teacher union reformers as is teachers’ salaries.

Teachers unions that organize by building member “ownership” of the union will be hurt by loss of agency fee, but they won’t be crushed.  It’s not Friedrichs that’s the biggest threat to teachers unions but rather the continuing belief that union officers and staff can do things for the members the members can’t win by mobilizing.  To restore union strength unions don’t have to rely on “fair share” from people who don’t want to join the union. We have to create unions teachers want to join, unions that will fight hard on economic concerns while showing parents and students how unions can use organizational strength and political power to defend good schools for all kids.

Lois Weiner, a member of the New Politics editorial board, is Professor of education at New Jersey City University and the Director of the Urban Education and Teacher Unionism Policy Project. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and here at New Politics.

Weiner does a really good job of highlighting the types of unions that may ultimately be crippled by a Friedrichs ruling that goes against the unions.  It won’t be the unions who already place a heavy emphasis on organizing rank and file around the issues that matter most to our members, our students, and our communities.  The unions that will suffer the most are the bureaucratic, top down model unions such as the UFT and NYSUT.

When you have a union whose only real organizing efforts have been to ask members for more VOTE-COPE money and to fire off a few faxes or emails you are likely to find a membership who is disconnected and disengaged.  It is harder, in these circumstances, to find value in your union.  This is particularly the case when those frequent requests for more money come amidst a string of huge legislative losses.

Building a successful and democratic union starts with building it at the workplace.  Within the grade levels or departments that we work in.  In our individual schools and school districts.  Through finding the problems that impact our work and working together to find solutions.  Through developing and implementing those problem solving strategies together.

The type of unionism that will survive will be the type that encourages debate and differing opinions.  The kind whose leadership welcomes questions and challenges from it’s membership and the type of union that welcomes contested elections.

None of these things are what we find in NYSUT as evidenced by my exchange with Karen Magee last week.  Instead we are told to trust that the officers are fighting for us when the leaders are questioned.  We get elections that are either pre-determined by backroom deals or are rigged by loyalty oaths.  We have “Call Out Cuomo” campaigns to raise money that was ultimately used for pro-Cuomo commercials.

I am not exactly sure what will happen if the decision doesn’t go our way in the Friedrichs case.  However I feel far more confident that the PJSTA will survive it than I do that NYSUT will.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on Friedrichs in the comments.

My Union IS My Business

Recently somebody from NYSUT was kind enough to recommend that I share questions and concerns that I had been tweeting about, with the NYSUT officers, with the idea that answers from them might comfort me and perhaps quell the negative feelings I have had about our parent union.  So on Friday I sat down and wrote out the following questions…

1. What are our strategies for deep organizing around having the Ed Transformation Act repealed?
2. In light of the increasingly stronger and successful actions taken by teachers not only nationally but globally, what are NYSUT’s plans for escalating statewide acts of civil disobedience and what is the plan to organize for actions of that magnitude?
3. What are the major cost cutting efforts underway in preparation of Friedrichs?…  Will metro funding be reduced?  Will it be proposed that we reduce the number of officers?  What percentage of a pay cut can we expect the officers and board of directors to take?  Will staff be cut?  How will field services be impacted?  What lines of communication are you opening with the rank and file to be sure that they have say in regards to what expenses are cut?

4. What is NYSUT doing to move from a top down, business unionism model to a union that is driven by it’s membership?
5. What suggestions does our leadership suggest for creating a more democratic union that is more representative of the rank and file’s voice?
6. How does a rank and file member go about seeing how VOTE-COPE funds have been spent?

To her credit, NYSUT President Karen Magee was quick to get back to me.  Here were her answers…

Thanks for writing. While we are always interested in engaging our members in the substantive issues that you raise in your email, I’m sure you also understand from your position as a union officer that much of what you raise here is subject to high-level negotiations. In any negotiating scenario, it’s imperative for the officers to let the members know that they are fighting on their behalf, as we have done, but just as crucial that the ebb and flow of the actual negotiations remain at the bargaining table.
The questions you raise in your third bullet point, in particular, are topics that are the purview of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, and certainly not topics of general discussion.
I flatly reject the premise of your fourth and fifth questions, in which you suggest that NYSUT is neither “driven by it’s [sic] membership,” nor “representative of the rank and file’s voice.”
I’m confused by your question about VOTE-COPE funds; a check of our records indicate that you are not a contributor to VOTE-COPE, so I’m not sure about the nature of your concern. Should you wish to see how VOTE-COPE contributions are being used, you can seek an appointment with Executive Vice President Pallotta to discuss.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any further questions.

Ms. Magee’s response, unfortunately, was exactly what I expected.  In essence what I was told was, “We are member driven and representative of the rank and file’s voice because I say we are.  Also none of what we do is any of your damn business… and if you want to know how we spend VOTE-COPE money then you can come up to Albany!”

I am not sure why organizing strategies to repeal the Ed Transformation Act of 2015 would be considered “subject to high-level negotiations” at this point in time.  We are well into budget season and there has been no apparent strategy to repeal the act, likely because NYSUT is choosing not to advocate for the repeal of the single most damaging piece of legislation that New York teachers have seen.  Unfortunately Ms. Magee’s assurance that the officers are fighting on my behalf does little to instill confidence in me.

I find her response to be equally unacceptable when it comes to my questions regarding potential cost cutting efforts.  There is a very good possibility that the ruling on the Friedrichs case will do tremendous financial damage to the union.  As a result one would think that members had the right to know what cost cutting measures are being submitted.  At the very least you’d believe that the rank and file’s input would, in some way, be encouraged as part of the process to develop a budget that makes necessary cuts.  The problem is that the officers might not hear what they want to if they communicated with members over those issues.

It is important to remember that at last year’s NYSUT RA, Unity Caucus lead the fight to add an additional officer position.  It’s also important to know that each NYSUT officer has a salary in the $250,000-$300,000 range with benefit packages that make the price tag soar even further.  You’ll want to recall the current officers voted themselves a 2% raise only months after their election.  Those are important considerations when it comes to where cost cutting measures should start.

At every NYSUT event I have attended I have gotten some sort of NYSUT tote bag.  Within days those bags typically ended up in the garbage or buried in the back of a closet.  Typically filling those bags have been materials printed on thick, glossy paper that I may have casually scanned before they ended up in the garbage or buried in the back of the aforementioned closet.  My point is that there are many places to shave considerable money off of before valued field services are impacted.  I believe the leadership has an obligation to engage the membership in discussion about what we view as the most important uses of our dues money.

As I have shared on this blog before, at one time I gave about $200 per year to VOTE-COPE.  The decision not to oppose Andrew Cuomo in the 2014 Democratic Primary when a worthy opponent in Zephyr Teachout was running was the final straw for me.  After that I reduce my VOTE-COPE contribution to $0.  In the year and a half since that time I have listened to NYSUT operatives stress time and again the need for increased VOTE-COPE contributions.  Were I ever to reconsider my decision not to contribute, you can bet I’d want to see how that money is being spent.  I don’t think that is an unreasonable expectation at all.  What I did find unreasonable, was Magee’s “confusion” over my question and her suggestion of having to seek an appointment with Andy Pallotta if I wanted that information.  Mind you, Mr. Pallotta’s office is at NYSUT headquarters in Albany.

All of this brings me to my biggest point.  Ms. Magee stated, “I flatly reject the premise of your fourth and fifth questions, in which you suggest that NYSUT is neither ‘driven by it’s [sic] membership,’ nor ‘representative of the rank and file’s voice.'”  This statement conflicts with nearly every aspect of the rest of her message.  Other than my final question, which she answered with an unreasonable suggestion, she basically refused to answer any of my questions.  To me, the refusal to answer questions or engage membership about these important issues are the very essence of top-down unionism.  The decision not to organize around the repealing of the Ed Transformation Act is the very opposite of representing the voice of the rank and file, whose careers and students are being wrecked by the legislation.

It is still stunning to me that this is the sort of response we get from the union, despite the pending Friedrichs decision.  As long as there is an opportunity to be a part of a union, I will always choose to do that.  I firmly believe that belonging to an ineffective union is better than belonging to no union.  At the very least it gives you a structure to work within to bring change.  However, I know that there will be many who don’t opt to remain a part of NYSUT.  When that happens the union only has to look at the, “It’s none of your business how we operate the union” sort of mentality that has pervaded it for far too long.

 

 

Let’s End Top Down Unionism

I have to thank my friend Norm Scott over at Ed Notes Online for the piece he recently wrote on the demise of the UFT’s blog Edwize.  I’ll admit that I had never even heard of Edwize.  But then again I don’t typically spend time reading Unity Caucus propaganda, so maybe that explains it.

Anyways, tucked into Norm’s piece was a real gem that he had from Mike Antonucci’s Intercepts blog…

Back in 2002, three NEA staffers wrote an article for the Journal of Labor Research on the union’s experiments in cyberspace. They concluded, “With modern cyber software, in short, content creation can be decentralized and democratized. Members can be empowered. But first, of course, members need to be trusted. A top-down union, comfortable with command-and-control internal information-sharing processes, might be unnerved by this prospect. A top-down union, uncomfortable with anything but command-and-control, will likely never succeed in cyberspace.”

At the time, I felt this was an encouraging view, but didn’t go far enough.

Sigh. All NEA can think about is how cyberspace will help it get members to do something. Completely unexamined (perhaps even unimagined) is what if cyberspace helps members to get NEA to do something? What if members share internal information not previously filtered through the communications staff? What if they decide to support or reject legislation not included in the union’s legislative program? What if they become unhappy meeting once a year in a group of 9,000 and would prefer a different arrangement? A membership truly engaged in NEA’s workings might make it a stronger union, but it would be a fundamentally different union from the one that exists now, and in ways utterly unpredictable to those who hope to harness that power.

Even 13 years later we haven’t reached that point, but we’re closer to it than we have ever been.

That passage gets to the heart of what I think is the biggest problem with our unions and that is the top down nature of them in which our leaders insist on.  “Command-and-control” as Antonucci calls it.  For as long as I have been a teacher (14 years) I have seen the leadership of NYSUT/AFT/NEA decide on what we are supporting, what positions to take, what needs to be done and then simply command the membership to pledge support to those positions.  To some extent this also happens in individual locals, though I think that is less the case in smaller locals.  Like most people in power, union leaders often act with their own best interests in mind, with the goal being to retain power over all else.

The decentralizing and democratizing of unions that those NEA staffers saw as a possibility in 2002 has started to take place in many unions across the country, only it hasn’t been with the consent of the union leadership, but more as a thorn in the leadership’s side.  Rank and file members are found utilizing social media to organize everyday in support of causes that their unions haven’t supported.  Opt-out campaigns are the perfect example of this.  Classroom teachers were organizing around that long before NYSUT did.  It’s why every day classroom teachers like Beth Dimino, Jia Lee, Kevin Glynn, and dozens of others are viewed as the real teacher leaders while the likes of Andy Pallotta, Mike Mulgrew, and Randi Weingarten are looked upon with disdain.

In 2014, when NYSUT refused to oppose Governor Cuomo, the PJSTA harnessed the power of social media to endorse and support his primary challenger Zephyr Teachout.  Teachout was a guest at the PJSTA Conference Day and held a press conference at Comsewogue High School with hundreds of our members at her backs.  We recorded her speech and spread it via YouTube so that teachers across the state could hear her pro-public education stance, giving her a chance to illustrate just how different she was than the incumbent Cuomo.  While falling short, Teachout reached nearly 35% of the primary voters and left us wondering what would have happened if our parent unions had worked for her in the ways that we had.

In other places around the country caucuses favoring a more democratic brand of unionism have either won control of their unions (Chicago, LA) or are mounting serious challenges (Philadelphia).  Of course right here in New York, the MORE Caucus is mounting a growing threat to Unity Caucus at the UFT level and STCaucus is becoming a force to be reckoned with inside of NYSUT.

One thing that I have often claimed and believe deeply is that union leadership of UFT/NYSUT/AFT value power above all else and will stop at nothing to retain that power.  This is even more noticeable with the Friedrichs threat looming.  At a time when unions should be doing more than ever to empower their members and allow the voice of the rank and file to drive their agendas, our leadership’s strategy has been to ask for more VOTE-COPE money all while attacking classroom teachers, issuing and early endorsement for former WalMart board member Hillary Clinton, cavort with our enemies in support of #TeachStrong, and  celebrate “momentous” victories that aren’t actual victories.

There is a member driven movement for a more democratic union that is coming.  How much it transforms our union remains to be seen, but the more rank and file teachers get informed, become engaged, and take back their unions the better off our profession, our students, and our communities will be.

If you haven’t already registered for the “Restoring Power to the Teacher” conference hosted by STCaucus do so right now!  Be sure to bring a friend you work with or one from another district.  this is your opportunity to have your voice heard and move your union in the direction you want it to go!