REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE UNITY
There has been a great deal of what can only be defined as “anti-union” sentiment espoused lately on a variety of sites and blogs. Now, we all know that Unity is the governing caucus of the UFT. We here at the UTP want to suggest that you remain calm and cool in the upcoming months. We are already faced with new contract negotiations, and new elections. Consider your options. Think of the past and the future. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Have a TV dinner by the pool. Vote early and vote often. And when you do, just keep in mind some of the things that our Unity leadership has brought us. The other guys didn’t bring 'em: Unity did. So remember that when those upstarts like Wainer start saying that they can do a better job than Randi/Unity. Unity has done plenty. Consider the following brief list:
1) Veteran teachers being excessed, only to become subs.
2) The return of professionalism: 6R assignments and the class that it will soon become.
3) Work in August.
4) Longer teaching periods.
5) Letters in file without the right to fight them until they really come after you and your license.
6) A raise that isn’t even cost of living.
7) Voting themselves a raise
8) A spin job that makes it seem as if they did a good job, and did you a favor.
9) A union that is a dictatorship, and guarantees that Randi’s Unity caucus will remain in control.
10) A patronage mill that makes Tammany Hall look like the Burger King drive through.
How do you spell collusion?
R-A-N-D-I
There has been a great deal of what can only be defined as “anti-union” sentiment espoused lately on a variety of sites and blogs. Now, we all know that Unity is the governing caucus of the UFT. We here at the UTP want to suggest that you remain calm and cool in the upcoming months. We are already faced with new contract negotiations, and new elections. Consider your options. Think of the past and the future. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Have a TV dinner by the pool. Vote early and vote often. And when you do, just keep in mind some of the things that our Unity leadership has brought us. The other guys didn’t bring 'em: Unity did. So remember that when those upstarts like Wainer start saying that they can do a better job than Randi/Unity. Unity has done plenty. Consider the following brief list:
1) Veteran teachers being excessed, only to become subs.
2) The return of professionalism: 6R assignments and the class that it will soon become.
3) Work in August.
4) Longer teaching periods.
5) Letters in file without the right to fight them until they really come after you and your license.
6) A raise that isn’t even cost of living.
7) Voting themselves a raise
8) A spin job that makes it seem as if they did a good job, and did you a favor.
9) A union that is a dictatorship, and guarantees that Randi’s Unity caucus will remain in control.
10) A patronage mill that makes Tammany Hall look like the Burger King drive through.
How do you spell collusion?
R-A-N-D-I
posted by A Strong, Proud UTP Member at 9/11/2006 06:18:00 PM
15 Comments:
#3 Working in August - Randi said since we come in early anyway, we might as well get paid for it. My August 30th check was 2 cents more than my August 16th check. Did she mean that? Or how are we supposed to be paid for coming in early for those two days? Will extra money be in my September 16th check? Or was it a part of our paltry cola? Did we recieve a salary adjustment for the first six months of our new contract?
Unity? Right.
How do you like a certain school whose entire staff is working tonight for an unpaid parent teacher meeting, in exchange for no staff development in October? This was supposedly suggested by teachers! Whether they thought this up themselves or were duped into it is unknown. Many teachers have to hang around all afternoon to be available for the 7PM meeting whether they want to or not. What do you think of the fact that their Union Rep is fine with it and did not even hold a meeting about it?
What do you think of this Union Rep bringing its "entire class" for early morning tutoring?
The teacher who complains becomes the rotten apple and leaves themselves open to subtle harassment that can not be grieved thanks to Randi's new contract. This school's teachers seem to be in for a real cheerful year...
The Unity UFT seems to be broken almost beyond repair. Bloomie has done a great job huh? We can thank Randi for making his job so easy!
UNITY is an oxymoron. There is no unity in UNITY.
Are we cheerful yet?
There is only one solution to this problem. Vote UNITY OUT!! Elections are in the spring; do everything you can think of to spread the message. UNITY OUT!
How many times do teachers have to get screwed before they wake up? If Unity pulls their collective asses out of the fire this time there really is no hope. What are TJC/ICE doing to expose the greed and corruption of the Unity caucus to the voting membership? Why are there no mail outs being sent to teachers explaining their position?
Did anybody else's union dues increase? Mine did about 80 cents! WTF?
ICE would be glad to send mailouts to everyone and so I'm sure would TJC. Do you know the cost of mailing something to 150,000 UFT members? Oh yes they'll be able to do that. What they need is people in the schools who are willing to distribute literature. The latest ICE flyer is on their site. The latest TJC leaflet is on their site.
Print both of them, make copies and distribute them in your schools. It's our only hope for change.
Yes Yes Yes... its time everyone started printing out flyers and stuffing the mailboxes at their school. We have to start taking responsiblity for the pathetic state of our union. Send Unity packin'!
Please everyone print and distribute leaflet and then tell ICE/TJC where you've been.
Or don't explain where you've been, just print out and distribute leaflets. No questions asked.
"What are TJC/ICE doing to expose the greed and corruption of the Unity caucus to the voting membership?"
Sorry I have to say it this way, but what are you doing and why are you waiting for ICE? We haev limited resources and besides there will be ni change until more people stand up by at least getting out leaflets.
I posted this on ICE-mail this morning:
I got a call from a new elem. school chap leader re: the ICE leaflet that she picked up at the chapter leader meeting last Tues. (Sept. 12).
That was the first she had heard of ICE. She said it was a wonderful leaflet full of information and she wished she had the info during the contract vote last year. She was going to white out the Dear Chapter Leader words and give it out to her staff.
By the way, she is in a Leadership Acad principal school who fits the mold -- arrogant, self-serving, mean, out to break older (over 40) teachers (5 have left teaching).
Question: Have you passed out or posted the leaflet in your school or sent it to your email contacts? You can download it from the ICE-UFT web site. I have also posted the text on the new educationnotes online blog for you to copy and paste. http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/
Excellent point... the membership of this union must take responsiblity for the sad state of our union. It's about time we did something about it. We get the leadership we deserve. Let Norm's words be your wake up call.
All praise Norm! The retire with the answers for the rest of my 20 year career!
I apologize:
All praise Norm! The retiree with the answers for the rest of my 20 year career!
Are the tides changing?
NY Times -September 20, 2006
Exerpt from Bloomberg Re-emphasizes School Control
By DIANE CARDWELL
Mr. Bloomberg told a gathering of city commissioners this year: “My great fear is that all of it will be thrown out and we will be right back to where we started. We’ve got to find some ways between now and the end of our administration to make it so compelling that the public will demand that we continue to put the interest of our students first, and the interest of the people who work in the system or benefit from getting contracts in the system last.”
Some of that fear may be well founded. In Albany, there appears to be little appetite to return to the past, but there is a growing sense that the mayor’s power needs to be checked. This could be done, lawmakers say, by giving parents more influence or strengthening the panel for educational policy.
“Mayoral control was not intended to be mayoral dictatorship,” said Eric T. Schneiderman, a state senator from Manhattan who serves on the Education Committee. “Most people want this to work, and the mayor has a tremendous amount of good will. But in the area of the community education councils and parental involvement, it would be shocking if there weren’t corrections to be made.”
Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, from Manhattan, echoed that sentiment. “Giving the mayor total control over the schools is not something that we think is perfect,” he said.
When the Legislature granted Mr. Bloomberg control, said Steven Sanders, a former assemblyman from Manhattan who helped negotiate the law with the administration, lawmakers anticipated that it would need tinkering. “This is a very complicated enterprise, and nobody can think of everything at the outset,” Mr. Sanders said.
According to Mr. Sanders, Mr. Bloomberg did not want any bureaucracy between him and the Education Department, but acquiesced in creating the panel for educational policy. But in 2004, he engineered the dismissal of three members of the panel because they opposed his plan to toughen promotion requirements for third graders.
In granting the mayor control over the schools in 2002, Mr. Sanders said, Albany lawmakers thought that even though the old Board of Education should be disbanded, there still needed to be a forum where “the public could at least voice their opinions.” Mr. Sanders and several lawmakers said that sentiment still ran strong in the state government.
But for Mr. Bloomberg, it is precisely that broad control over the schools, and how he has been able to exercise it, that has been at the heart of his efforts to overhaul the system. He hardly misses an opportunity to promote his new structures of authority and accountability, and to put any progress in the context of the city’s profound drop in crime.
This week, for instance, he argued that the time was ripe to attack another of the city’s most intractable problems, poverty, because the city had shown it could erase supposedly inevitable urban blights like high crime and troubled schools.
It would appear that Mr. Bloomberg is looking to do for education what Mr. Giuliani did for crime, which was in part to build a strong enough public consensus for his policies to ensure that his successors would largely continue them. But that task is complicated by the sense in education circles that it is far too early to judge mayoral control of the schools as a success or a failure.
“You talk to a student or a parent who’s in one of the new small schools, they’ll tell you that it’s fantastic,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the teachers’ union. “You talk to a parent of a special ed student who hasn’t gotten the placement they want, and they’ll tell you it’s terrible. You just have a whole bunch of anecdotes right now.”
In addition, education advocates and elected officials say, Mr. Bloomberg has alienated many parents — precisely the public needed to bring pressure on legislators — who feel excluded from influencing decisions about the system.
“His problem all along has been a lack of buy-in with the stakeholders of the system: parents, teachers and principals,” said Tim Johnson, chairman of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council, a parent group. Saying that an election every four years “is not enough to check and balance a mayor, especially a mayor with billions of dollars,” Mr. Johnson added that the parents “are more frustrated than ever,” especially given the several reorganizations undertaken by Mr. Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel I. Klein.
In the meantime, Mr. Bloomberg continues to spread his message about the virtues of mayoral control and accountability, with his Los Angeles visit today and, next month, as one of the speakers, along with Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, before a group of New York business leaders.
“The mayor’s re-election was a referendum on the choices he’s made, the progress he’s made and the reforms he’s made,” said Stu Loeser, Mr. Bloomberg’s chief spokesman.
Saying that building on and locking in his achievements were not the only reasons that the mayor was speaking out on educational issues, Mr. Loeser added, “We’re mindful of what needs to be done to keep moving in that direction, particularly on his central issue.”
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