How soon before Randi and Moneybags work on the "cost containment initiatives" for health care benefits now that Le Gran Fromage has won re-relection?
As always, the business of Unity is Unity.
I guess a military action would be out of the question...?
You have to love the vote count on the edwize homepage. According to Norm (who I believe 100%), the total number of ballots received was about 15,000. So how, exactly, did Randi receive 40,000+ votes? Am I missing something? And, as usual, I don't know one teacher who cast a vote for Randi.
Norm and I are talking about the votes of teachers. The Unity count includes nurses, paraprofessionals,retirees, drawbridge oilers, and whomever else is represented by the UFT. Perhaps Mr. Casey forgot.
Perhaps we ought to change the name of the organization to the United Federation of Everyone We Can Get to Vote for Unity. Although what with that quarter-million dollar logo and all, and absoluteluy no one on the executive board to represent us, it'll be an uphill battle.
It was expected. However New Action was the spoiler and those votes would have went to the opposition.
Now we sit back and get socked with a health cost bill when GHI benefits are so ridiculously low. I am still paying my deductible even though I reached it months ago because GHI does not use 21st century scales.
But what I am really waiting to see is what happens with ATRs. If they are offered an early retirement incentive, it better be for all of us too!
The Unity count includes nurses, paraprofessionals,retirees, drawbridge oilers, and whomever else is represented by the UFT...
What's the problem with other school-based workers being represented by the UFT (seriously, I'd like to know if this poses a problem)?
My big BIG problem is allowing retirees, who are non-workers and don't share our interests really at all, to vote. How is that even allowed by the Labor Relations Board? How can you have a democratic representation when people who have nothing to do with you get to vote on your working conditions?
The fact that our union has been able to represent secretaries, paras, guidance counselors, lab specialists, OT/PTs, scoial workers, psychologists and nurses that work in our schools is nothing to be dismissed so lightly. None of them are teachers but all of them play crucial roels in the lives of our students and in the everyday functioning of our schools. The fact that they are part of our union has not only increased our active union membership, more importantly we have been able to help all of tehm gain in different ways benfits that they may not have gotten being alone, with DC 37 or CSA to mention a few other unions. I'm sure you are not implying that they shouldn't be in our union and that we should throw them to the wolves? Why don't you mention that to any of these people that work in your school and see how they feel.
The fact that our union hgs been unable to represent teachers is probably far more important. as i read the comments here and the blogowner write about the degradation of the job under your stewardship i can see exactly how he feels and i feel the same way. plenty of those who voted like nurses and retirees dont evem work in schools and are not affected by the awful givebacks. ran di brought us the worst of the worst and allowed the most anti teacher administration ever unlimited unfettered power. bloomberg should give her a job because shes the best friend hes ever had.
22,400 retirees voted.
I'm all for the union representing other SCHOOL WORKERS than teachers. But look how they are treated in the UFT's democracy inaction.
Instead of giving each group a seat on the Exec Bd (ie. school psych, social workers, secties, paras, etc.) they are all lumped together and in essence get 14 what are termed "functional" seats and that includes retirees. Thus, old Unity war horse Abe Levine, who's main purpose is to keep defending UFT support for the Vietnam (and Iraq) war was just reelected.
A few of these chapters might even have chosen an independent to serve on the Board if allowed.
By the way, the nurses' chapter (not school nurses, but those in hospitals) is headed by Manhattan borough rep Jerry Goldman's wife. Between then they supposedly pull down a cool 300 grand of our union dues.
Comming soon: Around 30,000 home day care workers joining the UFT. While these people deserve representation, adding them to the Unity coffers will dilute the role of teachers in the UFT to a minority. This is being rammed through. They should be affiliated, but with their own Pres, officers, etc and their votes should not count in our elections.
Retriees made up about half of Randi's vote.
OK, if I understand, the problem with the other categories of workers is that:
1) non-school-based workers are voting on the same leadership as everyone else--I see how this is an obvious problem, akin to the problem of voting retirees, since what business do they have involving themselves in our contracts--or we involving ourselves in theirs? The obvious solution is not to remove them from the union per se but to give them their own unit with its own leadership and voting.
2) Even school-based workers such as paras and secretaries may not share the same interests as teachers. For my part, I doubt this since they also have to be stuck there during the extra 37.5 minutes, and also have to deal with chaotic schools and incompetent administrators.
As for retirees voting, that simply stinks. How common is that for other unions? By the way, I am NOT involved with ICE-TJC and I don't think they have any plans to change the voting rights of retirees.
As part of a reform package we do want to limit the voting rights of retirees but we don't all agree yet on how. Right now they CANNOT vote on contracts. But their 300 delegates are used when Unity needs them for an important vote at the DA.
In general union elections, one way would be to cut them from 18,000 to a much lower number. However, let me remind you that the 18,000 current votes would be swamped if the active members actually voted in the same numbers as retirees. Say half the 70,000 membership voted. If the opposition can't win the active members over or even get them to vote, the issue of limiting retiree votes is mute.
If the opposition ever does win at the divisional levels they could use that to force consitutional changes. As you see, we are a long way from that day.
Thank you, Norm, for the clarification.
Maybe a more realistic reform for now is to eliminate voting by mail, and place it in schools, or at least add a web-voting possibility. Paper mail is quite simply the communications medium of the elderly (as I write this, I haven't emptied my home mailbox in a few days). Unfortunately, because DOE email is not uniformly embraced by current teachers, email voting is not an option either.
Also, please speak up for an investigation into how many new teachers are actually enrolled in the UFT. I personally submitted registration cards three times to my chapter leader; I only finally had any success by mailing the thing into the offices myself.
i commented on this on an earlier haloscan but didnt get to come back and see answer. Many of my colleagues and I in the high school I taught in voted for ICE. This was not one of the high schools listed by Norm. Also, is the "mail it home" method a way for Unity to depress the vote of active members? Why can't we vote in school? Sorry to be repetetitive but I can't find the earlier post on the website anymore.
Here is why we feel the "in school" method is more subject to corruption: CL become the vehicle of transmission and so many are Unity. The home mail method is the fairest run by the AAA. Ballots never touch union hands. If we had enough troops on the ground we could get out the vote.
One of our elem CL ran a pizza party and the price of admission was to bring in the ballot. She is very honest and told them the 3 choices but obviously they knew she was running with ICE. They placed them in the envelopes and mailed them en masse. But the snafu with ballots returned caused some problems and a few votes were returned and had to be redone. About 35 teachers took part.
But look at the effort it takes. That is why building an opposition that will be effective is so much more than just a campaign or an election every 3 years. It's recruiting a large cadre of activists as the first step.
New Action after 20 or more years had a cadre, expecially of retirees that got to way more schools than we did. ICE only 3 years+ old is just building. And TJC which was a different kind of group before the New Action sellout 3 years ago has also been building its infrastructure. These things do not happen overnight and ICE/TJC core people viewed the election as part of this building process as opposed to people not involved in the day to day stuff who see elections in a different way.
Do not forget, we are not doing this in a vacuum. We have BloomKlein and principals spreading fear and loathing and a massive Unity machine organizing too with offers of jobs and perks. Most people go that way, even those who want change, saying "we can change Unity from within, you guys are so weak you are not viable." I agree to some extent. Not viable yet.
We were talking at the count and I said we need 200-500 people active in the schools beyond putting out a flyer every so often at least to make a dent. One of the people in TJC said, "Let's start with 50 strong committed people." Very true. We are open to any of you who are willing to sign on.
"Unfortunately, because DOE email is not uniformly embraced by current teachers, email voting is not an option either."
Unfortunately, compared to hotmail or gmail, DOE email isn't worth being uniformly embraced by current teachers, either.
I have learned from my parent union (aft) that real wages have not gone up more than 2 percent since 1994.
Funny that the pre-contract vote and pre-election Unity propaganda disputes that figure and said we got huge raises, even funnier is that the AFT report came out after the election...
Commenting by HaloScan
